Product Description

This book is the first one of a series of four books dedicated to helping you to become an effective brief therapist.

Book one covers the foundations required to underpin effective brief therapy.

The book covers topics from Pattern Matching and Problem Structure to Hypnosis and The Role of Trance both in problem maintenance and problem resolution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1452896 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-07
• Released on: 2008-08-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

About the Author
The author has over 15 years experience working predominantly in the areas of Depression; Anxiety; Phobia and Trauma Treatment (including PTSD, OCD and other anxiety problems)

He has worked on TV programmes like 'The Anatomy of Fear', and has been featured on the radio, in newpapers and had work appear in magazines; including 'New Scientist' and 'BBC Focus'

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1...

Introduction...

For many years psychologists have wondered about the mind. They have wondered about how problems are caused and maintained, wondered about how different people can respond to the same situation in different ways.
Over the last few decades psychologists have been able to take a closer look than ever before into how the mind works. With the latest brain scanning technology scientists have been able to watch thought processes in action.
As well as having new and improved technology there was some people that began to look at problems and treatment in a different way. In the 1970's John Grinder and Richard Bandler (the co-creators of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)) set out to discover what many top therapists had in common. What they had noticed was that regardless of the therapy certain therapists achieved very high levels of results. In the same way that thousands of people can play golf but certain people can play golf exceptionally well.
Not only did Bandler and Grinder see what made some therapists highly effective, they also decided to find out what it was that people who used to have problems did to overcome those problems. At the time most researchers would focus on those that couldn't get over their problems. For example at the time most researchers would gather together groups of people with phobias to try to workout what is going on and how to treat them.
What Bandler and Grinder did was to create techniques and structures for treating people based on how those that used to have problems but overcame them managed to get better. This way of looking at problems was a new approach. For years it had been used in sports, for example where you would learn how a top golfer plays, you would learn how they stand, how they hold the club, where they look as they swing the club, etc. But it had not really been used in therapy to see what made some therapists more effective than others, or what people did to get over problems they once had.
Since the 1970's many psychologists have studied how problems are formed, maintained and why different people respond differently to the same situation.
This book is designed to be useful as a practitioners guide to effective therapy.
Often having an understanding of a problem, knowing what is wrong and how it should be treated can give piece of mind. With so many types of treatments available for psychological problems it can be difficult to know what treatment is effective and what treatment could be harmful. Currently there are over 400 different types of psychotherapy and counselling.
This book is aimed at increasing the knowledge of practitioners. The next chapter will cover pattern matching, problem structure and effective therapy. This chapter is an overview giving a foundation on which the rest of the series of book is built on. The series is structured to increase your knowledge in stages.
Each chapter and book builds on what you have learnt previously.
Throughout this book and Part Two: `Therapy; Techniques and Treatments' there are exercises to help you to integrate and practice what you have learnt.