Beyond the Therapeutic Relationship

Behavioral, Biological, and Cognitive Foundations of Psychotherapy

Seeking to transfer knowledge across ideological boundaries within a theoretically valid, scientific framework, Beyond the Therapeutic Relationship draws upon and relates existing research from psychotherapy and the allied fields of human behavior. Author Frederic J. Leger has successfully cut across multifarious therapies to create an integrated, high-order theory that unites psychotherapy’s disparate forces. In the process, he addresses the theoretical underpinnings of the field of psychotherapy, the paradigm of the therapeutic relationship and its centrality to therapeutic change, the difficulties of creating a “scientific discipline” from the study of the psyche, and the factionalization of psychology into different competing schools.

By exploring universal variables and how they fit into a causal nexus, Beyond the Therapeutic Relationship identifies transtheoretical processes of change that cut across diverse therapies. It also offers heuristic research direction and guidance in eclectic and integrative practice as it broadens the perspective on the psychotherapeutic encounter. Combining physiological, social, and psychological research into a transtheoretical psychodynamic theory, this important text discusses:

• why the need for paradigmatic direction is urgent

• bringing nonverbal variables to the therapist’s working awareness or focus

• how a small range of conceptual possibilities limits knowledge of human behavior

• the lack of efficacy in psychotherapy

• the psychobiological significance of intensive experiential exploration

• formation of the “self” through language and discourse

• integrative eclecticism within transtheoretical and common factors integration

  Psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health therapists, and academics and students in psychology, psychiatry, and educational psychology now have a text that cuts across the multitude of therapeutic approaches to provide a theory that is empirically supported and grounded in the author’s 25 years of clinical practice. As you will see, Beyond the Therapeutic Relationship discusses the current position of the field of psychotherapy, where it needs to go, specific strategies for getting there as well as alternative interventions beyond empathy and the therapeutic relationship.