Integrating the work of leading therapists, the book covers both conceptual foundations and current treatment applications. The volume delineates a variety of experiential methods, and describes newly developed models of experiential diagnosis and case formulation.

In process experiential psychotherapy, the therapist works to guide the client's affective and cognitive processing of experience through the use of appropriate active interventions that facilitate the resolution of painful emotions. This book demonstrates this emotion-focused approach to treatment.

Examining the actual moment-to-moment process of therapy, this volume provides specific ways for therapists to engender effective movement, particularly in those difficult times when nothing seems to be happening. The book concentrates on the ongoing client therapist relationship and ways in which the therapist's responses can stimulate and enable a client's capacity for direct experiencing and "focusing." Throughout, the client therapist relationship is emphasized, both as a constant factor and in terms of how the quality of the relationship is manifested at specific times. The author also shows how certain relational responses can turn some difficulties into moments of relational therapy.

"In Learning Process-Experiential Therapy: The Process-Experiential Approach to Change, the originators of process-experiential therapy describe in detail the various tasks and techniques of this theoretically grounded, empirically supported humanistic therapy, while emphasizing the importance of the therapeutic relationship. The authors, Robert Elliott, Jeanne C. Watson, Rhonda N. Goldman, and Leslie S. Greenberg, well-respected scholars and leading figures in the field, discuss theory, case formulation, treatment, and research in a way that makes this complex form of therapy accessible to all readers. Particularly valuable are their careful moment-to-moment exchanges in extended case examples, which show the reader how deliberate and skillful use of these techniques can bring about change. This informative book will be of great practical value to therapists and students learning process-experiential therapy as well as to those who teach this mode of psychotherapy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

How to Take a Friendly Perspective: Philosophy of Science and the Field of Psychotherapy; A Thumbnail Sketch of the Experiential Model of Human Beings; In-Session Goals, Objectives, and Directions of Change; For What Patients Is Experiential Psychotherapy Useful, Appropriate, and Appealing?; For What Kinds of Therapists Is Experiential Psychotherapy Suitable, and What Determines That the Session Will Be Effective?; Dealing with the Practicalities of Experiential Psychotherapy; Step 1 - Being in the Moment of Strong Feeling and Accessing the Inner Experiencing; Step 2 - Integrative Good Relationship with Inner Experiencing; Step 3 - Being the Inner Experiencing in Earlier Scenes; Being and Behaving as the Inner Experiencing in the Present.

This voluminous book of 47 chapters offers a good cross section of what is burgeoing in the field of client-centered and experiential psychotherapy on the threshold of the nineties. it does not represent a single vision but gives the floor to the various suborientations: classics Rogerians; client-centered therapists who favor some form of integration or even eclecticism; experiential psychotherapists for whom Gendlin's focusing approach is a precious way of working; client-centered therapists who look at the therapy process in terms of information-processing; existentially oriented therapists... Remarkable is that - for the first time in the history of client-centered/experiential psychotherapy - the European voice rings through forcefully: more than half of the contributions were written by authors from Western Europe.Several chapters contain reflections on the evolution--past, present, and future--of client-centered/experiential psychotherapy. The intensive research into the process, which had a central place in the initial phase of client-centered therapy, is given here ample attention, with several creative studies and proposals for renewal. In numerous contributions efforts are made to build and further develop a theroy of psychopathology, the client's process, the basic attitudes and task-oriented interventions of the therapist. The chapters dealing with clinical practice typically aim at the description of therapy with specific client populations and paricularly severely disturbed clients. And finally a few fields are introduced which are new or barely explored within the client-centered/experiential approach: working with dreams, health psychology, couple and family therapy.

A sensible and compassionate book that will help those involved in any form of therapy make the best possible use of their time, effort, and money. "A fascinating blend of Eastern spirituality, Western psychotherapy, feminist consciousness, and real caring."--Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade 35 black-and-white photographs.