How Clients Make Therapy Work

What makes therapy work? Ultimately it is the client. Most people cope, survive, and grow with challenges in their everyday lives, with or without the help of a therapist.

In this provocative book, the authors debunk the medical model of the psychotherapist as healer who merely applies the proper nostrum to make the client well. Instead, they see the therapist as a coach, collaborator, and teacher who frees up the client's innate tendency to heal.

The self-healing tendency of the client usually overrides differences in technique or theoretical approach, which is why research continually finds different approaches to therapy to be equally as effective. If the client is the driver of change, how can therapists help? Often therapists can help their clients by simply providing an empathic workspace that allows the client's capacity for generative thinking to thrive.

The authors show how different schools of therapy have unique ways of mobilizing clients and share tips for dealing with client resistance, passivity, and maladaptive behavior.

This practical and provocative book is a must-read for those who care about the nature of therapeutic change.