ABSTRACT

Case Formulation in Contemporary Psychotherapy presents a new approach to case conceptualization and case formulation, making meaning from each clinical case and using every piece of data available.

Robert Mendelsohn explains his core basic principles for case formulation, allowing the clinician to assess a case quickly and accurately. This book includes a discussion of the contributions of transference and countertransference, inducement and enactment, as well as the use of paradigmatic techniques, humor, and language. The processes presented, alongside vignettes illustrating their use, will allow clinicians to decode the meaning of all clinical interaction and to communicate that meaning in a helpful way to students and patients.

Providing a new way to access a full range of conscious and preconscious clinical information, Case Formulation in Contemporary Psychotherapy will be essential reading for mental health professionals including psychotherapists and psychodynamic and psychoanalytic clinicians in practice and in training. It will also be of great interest to students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

chapter Chapter 1|24 pages

The History of Case Formulation and Treatment Planning

From Freud (1918) to W. Reich (1946); from Reich to T. Reik (1948, 1959); from Reik to Bion (1962, 1976) and Winnicott (1960, 1971) to Billow and Mendelsohn (1990)

chapter Chapter 6|41 pages

'Magical Processes' in Case Formulation