Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How to Be Brief When You Were Trained to Be Deep and Vice Versa

"A challenging, precise, and exciting approach to therapy that will delight those therapists who celebrate the complexity of clients. Ecker and Hulley combine a thoughtful attention to the unconscious with a commitment to making every session count. Gutsy, convincing, and powerful!" (David B. Waters, Ph.D., professor family practice and psychiatry, University of Virginia, author of Competence, Courage and Change)

As the demand for time-limited, demonstrably effective psychotherapy increasingly dominates the mental health professions, many therapists are caught between this demand and their aversion to brief therapy, which they see as sacrificing vital qualities of the work—the depth and durability of resolution reached, the thoroughness of change in the emotional and unconscious basis of the problem, the trust-based client-therapist relationship. These therapists are asking: Is it possible for clinicians to provide in-depth therapy in the cost-conscious, time-limited world of managed care? In this groundbreaking book, authors Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley show how to work directly and immediately with the emotional and unconscious meanings that structure the very existence of the presenting problem, making in-depth therapy so effective as to be brief. This book represents a new stage in brief therapy and offers clinicians new hope of maintaining professional satisfaction in time-effective practice.From start to finish, this book is a practical guide to working deeply and briefly with individuals, couples, and families and includes:

• a clear and complete methodology and conceptual framework for producing lasting change beyond symptom relief
• a compAndium of specific techniques for depth-oriented brief therapy
• how to work time-effectively with clients whose presenting symptoms are driven by unresolved, lifelong emotional wounds
• abundant case examples with clients who suffer from a wide range of presenting symptoms, such as low self-esteem, chronic depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, agoraphobia, symbiotic attachment, dissociation, psychogenic pain, and sequelae of sexual abuse.