The Good Enough Therapist: Futility, Failure, and Forgiveness in Treatment

Description

The Good Enough Therapist is a guidebook―not an instruction manual―written for beginning, intermediate, and experienced clinicians. It encourages readers to explore, accept, and embrace their flaws and failings in a way that promotes effective treatment as well as personal growth. It focuses both on craft and process―craft related to the tools, the strategies, and the tactics of treatment, and process related to the session-by-session struggle to implement these tools in ways that speak to and illuminate the experience of living and struggling as a human being. It does not endeavor to transmit a method, but a sensibility, a way of being with patients that results in a deeper recognition of the therapist’s, and the patient’s, vulnerability, resilience, imagination, and integrity. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Previous Books Acknowledgments Introduction: Socioeco-Location 1 The Vandal Interlude 1: What Is the Point of My Writing This Book? 2 On Writing About the Clinical Without Being Too Clinical 3 Good Enough or Good-for-Nothing? Reflection Point 1: Good Enough and Not Good Enough 4 A Place to Start: On the Importance of Treatment Failure When Treating a “Failure-to-Launch” 5 Two Powerful Lessons in Powerlessness 6 Three Births . . . 7 . . . and a Fourth Birth, the Birth of Forgiveness Reflection Point 2: “Why Is S/he Here and What Does S/he Want?” 8 The Joy of Thwarting . . . and of Being Thwarted Interlude 2: Pull Up a Chair 9 Reduced Sentences Interlude 3: In the Company of Shadows: Visions of Grief 10 Cash in the Cup Interlude 4: The Adolescent (and Adult) Saboteur 11 Here and Not Here, There and Not There Interlude 5: Hard Winter Reflection Point 3: Blame, Responsibility, and Credit 12 Tough Love—And Why It’s so Tough Reflection Point 4: Ascending the Ladder of Therapy 13 The Ambivalent Tango of Hope 14 Narcissism and Its (Occasional) Nobility Interlude 6: Unsolvable Love 15 Nowhere but the Dark Interlude 7: Wandering Down Dream Avenue 16 Punishing the Punitive Therapist Interlude 8: “Tell Me a Story” 17 On Hating a Patient 18 What Do We Want When We Want Out? Reflection Point 5: Creativity as an Antidote to Failure 19 Defeated by Success 20 The Diagnostic Dragnet Reflection Point 6: Learning From Your Patient 21 We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident . . . but Without Any Real Evidence Interlude 9: Plumbing the Depths of Power 22 “I Am Beside Myself” Reflection Point 7: Kryptonite Time 23 What We Give Our Patients When We Give Up—and When We Don’t Reflection Point 8: Nostalgia and Empathy 24 “Why Am I Doing This?” 25 The Good Enough Supervisor Interlude 10: “How Is It That I Am Not Myself?” 26 Giving What You Never Got Reflection Point 9: How Telling 27 Loops Reflection Point 10: Take a Walk Conclusion: “Going Grandfather”: The Good Enough Therapist in Twilight Epilogue: In Praise of Defeat Index