Description: This volume offers clinicians an inside view of the new perspectives that are transforming the field of psychotherapy. Unlike traditional therapies that focus on deficit or dysfunction, these new approaches amplify and build upon clients' resources and strengths. Within this context, the clinician acts as a facilitator who helps the client generate new stories that engender hope and optimism - alternatives to the problem-saturated stories that have dominated the client's life and relationships. Meanings and understandings are co-constructed rather than imposed by the therapist, and the client is given the lead in determining the goals and focus of the therapy. By taking seriously the client's request, therapy becomes time-effective as well. The book's major sections explore paths to solution: the clinician shifts attention toward the client's resources, successes, and unexamined exceptions to the problem; narratives of liberation: the clinician helps the client to become free of oppressive constraints and limitations and to generate new, more liberating life stories; reflexive conversations: the clinician and client engage in a recursive interchange of talking and listening that opens space for the emergence of new perspectives; the postmodern era - a universe of stories: the dilemmas of the postmodern world are examined in a narrative framework. Throughout the book, transcripts of clinical interviews translate theory into practice and demonstrate the application of these models to complex, longstanding problems. Questions posed by the editor to the authors at the end of each chapter elicit intriguing personal views of the therapeutic process rarely found in professional books. Thispioneering effort, assembling the innovations of highly creative clinicians, will enrich the practice of psychotherapy. For psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, and psychiatric nurses, the book is an enlightening resource. The volume also serves as an excellent graduate level text in these fields.

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