The Therapeutic Interview in Mental Health A Values-Based and Person-Centered Approach

Emotions and values are considered the keys to understanding peoples' experiences and actions within the world they inhabit. The traditional symptom-led clinical interview is frequently criticised for ignoring the narrative of a patient's experience in favour of ticking-off symptoms that can be reduced or controlled. In response, this important new book seeks to understand a patient's sufferings through their individual experiences and values. The Therapeutic Interview in Mental Health is about the art of asking questions. This comprehensive book will equip psychologists, psychiatrists and clinicians with the tools to begin unlocking the emotions and experiences of their patients. The method of the therapeutic interview is explained in a step-by-step way, allowing the reader to understand the clinical interview as a means of beginning a shared understanding between patient and clinician. This book is an essential read for all psychologists, psychiatrists, general clinicians, and medical trainees.

Part I. The Toolbox: 1. Introduction; 2. The technical approach to interviewing; 3. Main criticisms of the technical approach; 4. The meaning of symptoms in the biomedical paradigm; 5. The meaning of symptoms in the psychodynamic paradigm; 6. The symptom as a text; 7. The concept of 'life-world'; 8. An example of life-world analysis; 9. What are emotions and why are they relevant to the therapeutic interview?; 10. What are values and why are they relevant to the therapeutic interview?; 11. A quest for meaning; 12. A decalogue for the therapeutic interview; Part II. Life-Worlds: 13. Introduction; 14. The life-world of borderline persons; 15. The life-world of persons with schizophrenia; 16. The life-world of persons with melancholia; 17. The life-world of persons with feeding and eating disorders.

Giovanni Stanghellini, M.D. is Dr. Phil. Honoris Causa, Psychiatrist and Full Professor of Dynamic Psychology and Psychopathology at the Università degli Studi 'G. d'Annunzio' Chieti-Pescara, Italy and Profesor Adjuncto at the Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. He has written extensively on the philosophical foundations of psychopathology, especially from a phenomenological and anthropological viewpoint. He is co-editor of the Oxford University Press series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry. He chairs the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section on the Humanities, the Association of European Psychiatrists (EPA) Section on Philosophy and Psychiatry, the Scuola di Psicoterapia Fenomenologico-Dinamica, Florence and co-chairs the International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry. Among his books: Nature and Narrative (co-edited, 2003), Disembodied Spirits and Deanimated Bodies: The Psychopathology of Common Sense (2004), Emotions and Personhood (with R. Rosfort, 2013), One Century of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology (co-edited, 2013), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (co-edited, 2013) and Lost in Dialogue: Anthropology, Psychopathology and Care (2016).
Milena Mancini focuses on the identification of phenomenological phenotypes (pheno-phenotypes), with a particular focus on abnormal bodily experiences, with a view to integrating psychopathology, philosophy and neurosciences and the transformation of these experiences that is produced by mental disorders, in particular in schizophrenia, melancholia, and eating disorders. Mancini also deals with what are values and why they matter in clinical practice. She previously worked in an international research team in Chile on the validation of a scale for the assessment of abnormal interpersonal experiences in people affected by schizophrenia. She has several publications in top-level international journals, including Schizophrenia Bulletin and Comprehensive Psychiatry. She also translated, from German to Italian, the essay by Karl Jaspers 'Eifersuchtwahn' published by Raffaelo Cortina (2015) and the essay by Ernst Kretschmer 'Körperbau und Charakter', which is being considered for publication.