Personality and Psychotherapy Treating the Whole Person

The author demonstrates how multidimensional assessment--within a strong therapeutic alliance--can be a guide to treating clients as multifaceted individuals rather than simply treating symptoms or diagnoses.

This innovative book provides a framework for using recent advances in personality science to inform and enrich psychotherapy. The author demonstrates how multidimensional assessment within the context of a strong therapeutic alliance can serve as a guide to treating clients as multifaceted individuals, rather than simply treating symptoms or diagnoses. Key concepts and procedures of personality assessment are clearly explained, as are ways to use the resulting data effectively in treatment planning and intervention with individuals or couples. The concluding chapter features an extended case example illustrating the author's approach.

1. Introduction2. Domain 1--Traits3. Domain 2--Characteristic Adaptations: Personal Strivings and Defenses4. Domain 3--Narrative Identity: Life Stories and Self-Defining Memories5. Relational Dynamics6. Foundations and Principles of a Person-Based Psychology and Psychotherapy7. Case Study of a Person-Based TherapyAppendix A. Contact Information for Obtaining Instruments Referred to in This VolumeAppendix B. The Historical Roots of a Person-Based Psychology

Jefferson A. Singer, PhD, is a professor of psychology at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, and is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Waterford, Connecticut. He has written two previous books, The Remembered Self: Emotion and Memory in Personality (with Peter Salovey) and Message in a Bottle: Stories of Men and Addiction, as well as numerous articles, chapters, and reviews on clinical psychology and personality and memory. Dr. Singer is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, past associate editor of the Journal of Personality, and is the 2005 recipient of the Theodore R. Sarbin Award for Theoretical Contributions to Psychology, presented by Division 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association.