A practitioner's guide to what works in modern psychotherapy.

This book is a simple recounting of what makes a psychotherapy effective, across different schools, and with a special emphasis on Ambivalence Based Psychotherapy, ABP. ABP is a modern evolution of psychodynamic psychotherapy. ABP includes elements of Freudian thought minus the many overly abstract, cult-like theoretical constructs. While retaining defense recognition, ABP regards many of our desires as inherently and irreducibly conflicting. Both sides of conflicting desires are real and cannot be changed. By transforming the decision of which desire to gratify and which desire to thwart, in ABP the psychotherapist helps the individual transform that decision from an emotional one to an intellectual one. In 71 easy-to-read pages, many of the basic principles and practicalities of effective psychotherapy generally are reviewed. This booklet will be a help to psychiatry Residents, counselors, and psychotherapists on their path to stronger competence. The minimally theoretical approach of ABP makes the booklet useful also to anyone wanting to better understand what psychotherapy can do, how it works, and what psychotherapy cannot do. The author is a psychiatrist with 40 years of experience who believes Psychiatry is best practiced with competency in ABP as well as in neuropharmacology.