Treating Affect Phobia

Leigh McCullough, PhD, until her death in 2012, was Associate Clinical Professor and Director of the Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts), and a visiting professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway). She was the 1996 Voorhees Distinguished Professor at the Menninger Clinic and received the 1996 Michael Franz Basch Award from the Silvan Tomkins Institute for her contributions to the exploration of affect in psychotherapy. Dr. McCullough was on the editorial boards of Psychotherapy Research and the Journal of Brief Therapy, and conducted training seminars in Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (STDP) worldwide. Nat Kuhn, MD, PhD, is Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry and Assistant Director of the Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard Medical School. He teaches STDP and supervises at the Cambridge Hospital and elsewhere. Dr. Kuhn has a private psychotherapy and psychiatry practice in the Boston area, and a Web site, www.natkuhn.com. Before going to medical school he was a mathematician.Stuart Andrews, PhD, is a psychotherapist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Assistant Director of the Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard Medical School. He has presented at international conferences and conducted training seminars on STDP. He has taught and supervised clinicians and students, and published articles on psychotherapy integration and short-term therapy. Mr. Andrews is also Director of the Center for Families in Transition, where his program, "For the Sake of the Children," is mandated in a number of communities in Massachusetts for parents going through divorce. Amelia Kaplan is a graduate student in clinical psychology at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University, where she pursues interests in mind-body psychology, STDP, group therapy, and human sexuality. Jonathan Wolf, MD, was a member of the Psychotherapy Research Program for three years. After graduating from Boston University School of Medicine, he entered the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program.Cara Lanza Hurley, PhD, received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Loyola University Chicago in 2005.

• IntroductionPart I. Theory, Evaluation, and FormulationChapter 1. Affect and Affect Phobia in Short-Term TreatmentChapter 2. Affect Phobia, Psychodynamic Conflict, and Malan's Two TrianglesChapter 3. Assessment and Selection of Treatment for the PatientChapter 4. How to Formulate a Core Psychodynamic Conflict: Spotting Affect PhobiasPart II. Defense and Affect RestructuringIntroduction to Part IIChapter 5. Defense Restructuring Phase I: Defense RecognitionChapter 6. Defense Restructuring Phase II: Defense RelinquishingChapter 7. Affect Restructuring Phase I: Affect ExperiencingChapter 8. Affect Restructuring Phase II: Affect ExpressionPart III. Self- and Other-RestructuringIntroduction to Part IIIChapter 9. Self-Restructuring: Building Compassion and Care for SelfChapter 10. Other-Restructuring: Building Adaptive Inner Images of OthersPart IV. Diagnostic Considerations and TerminationChapter 11. Treating Specific Diagnoses: The Relationship between DSM Diagnoses and Affect PhobiasChapter 12. TerminationAppendix. Answers to ExercisesReferences

This work is an extraordinary synthesis of depth and practicality. It is as clear, concrete, and richly exampled a treatment manual as I have seen, yet it depicts not a simple or mechanistic therapy but one that goes to the very heart of human feeling and experience. Incorporating a profoundly integrative vision, Treating Affect Phobia will be of great value not only to psychodynamically oriented therapists but to anyone in the field who appreciates the accumulating evidence for the central role of affect--and fear of affect--in our lives.--Paul L. Wachtel, PhD, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, City College and the CUNY Graduate Center, New YorkThis is the training manual that teachers and practitioners of short-term dynamic therapy have been eagerly anticipating. It is the first psychodynamically oriented volume that expertly guides the novice through emotion-focused, time-sensitive psychotherapy in an explicit, step-by-step fashion. The manual is enhanced by very useful exercises that allow therapists to try out their interventions and compare them to the authors' expert responses. This volume represents a new and exciting development in the teaching, learning, and practice of psychodynamic/integrative therapy in general, and brief psychotherapy in particular.--Stanley B. Messer, PhD, Dean, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers UniversityThis is a treatment manual with a number of fabulous characteristics: it takes the astute clinical observations of psychodynamic therapists and sets them within modern principles of learning and behavioral change; it draws from the best of the behavior therapy treatments for phobias; it is beautifully clear and easy to follow; and it has comprehensive learning exercises at the end of each chapter to help the clinician actually learn how to apply the treatment in clinical practice. I plan to have my students read it.--Marsha M. Linehan, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of WashingtonThis carefully reasoned and researched manual starts with the simple assumption that many people are afraid of their own emotions, offers easy ways to identify whatever is being expressed or even suppressed, and explains clearly the authors' suggestions for treatment.--Donald L. Nathanson, MD, The Silvan S. Tomkins Institute and Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Jefferson Medical College- This is the training manual that teachers and practitioners of short-term dynamic therapy have been eagerly anticipating. It is the first psychodynamically oriented volume that expertly guides the novice through emotion-focused, time-sensitive psychotherapy in an explicit, step-by-step fashion. The manual is enhanced by very useful exercises that allow therapists to try out their interventions and compare them to the authors' expert responses. This volume represents a new and exciting development in the teaching, learning, and practice of psychodynamic/integrative therapy in general, and brief psychotherapy in particular. -Stanley B. Messer, PhD, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers- --The State University of New Jersey, 1/26/2003