Therapeutic Change: An Object Relations Perspective (NATO Science Series B:) - Hardcover

Blatt, Sidney J.; Ford, Richard Q.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306446014 ISBN 13: 9780306446016

Publisher: Springer, 1994

Synopsis

Dynamic psychotherapy research has become revitalized, especially in the last three decades. This major study by Sidney Blatt, Richard Ford, and their associates evaluates long-term intensive treatment (hospital­ ization and 4-times-a-week psychotherapy) of very disturbed patients at the Austen Riggs Center. The center provides a felicitous setting for recovery-beautiful buildings on lovely wooded grounds just off the quiet main street of the New England town of Stockbridge, Massa­ chusetts. The center, which has been headed in succession by such capable leaders as Robert Knight, Otto Will, Daniel Schwartz, and now Edward Shapiro, has been well known for decades for its type of inten­ sive hospitalization and psychotherapy. Included in its staff have been such illustrious contributors as Erik Erikson, David Rapaport, George Klein, and Margaret Brenman. The Rapaport-Klein study group has been meeting there yearly since Rapaport's death in 1960. Although the center is a long-term care treatment facility, it remains successful and solvent even in these days of increasingly short-term treatment. Sidney Blatt, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Yale Univer­ sity, and Richard Ford of the Austen Riggs Center, and their associates assembled a sample of 90 patients who had been in long-term treatment and who had been given (initially and at 15 months) a set of psychologi­ cal tests, including the Rorschach, the Thematic Apperception Test, a form of the Wechsler Intelligence Test, and the Human Figure Drawings.

About this title

Review

`Elegant and complex...well organized, well written, and exciting to read....an impressive report of sophisticated and valuable research that gives voice to the revitalization of dynamic psychotherapy research and to the notion that intensive psychotherapy is not just expensive but effective as well....The report of this research will become common knowledge to both researchers and clinicians interested in the therapeutic action of dynamic treatment.'
American Journal of Psychiatry

Synopsis

This book details the successful psychodynamically-oriented inpatient treatment of 90 young adults suffering from severe mental illness. It documents the nuances of changing troubled behavior, describes behaviors which predict future positive behavioral change, and provides a sophisticated new technique to document change. Clinicians will appreciate the comprehensive, focused approach to all aspects of long-term treatment.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0306446014
• ISBN 13: 9780306446016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328