Paul M. Cameron

Standards and guidelines for the psychotherapies

Standards and Guidelines for the Psychotherapies provides a comprehensive overview of the art and science of psychotherapy and a set of practice guidelines for psychiatrists. The main aim is to improve standards and practices, and to initiate discussion. This book was developed from a report by the Joint Task Force on Standards and Guidelines for Medical (Psychiatric) Psychotherapy, which was established by the Ontario Psychiatric Association and Ontario Medical Association (Section of Psychiatry). The report was prepared in response to four phenomena emerging in recent psychotherapy: 1) The realization that there were no written guidelines or standards for the practice of medical psychotherapy; 2) the changing forces that now influence health policy and funding, both in U.S. and Canada; 3) The potential for arbitrary deinsurance of some procedures in the absence of agreed upon standards, and without regard to the evidence for the effectiveness of psychiatric procedures; and 4) Growing concern regarding the problem of sexual abuse of patients by physicians. This is an excellent reference book for medical professionals practicing in the field of psychotherapy, and will prove to be a valuable resource in the ongoing practice and development of psychotherapy.

Supervision of termination in psychotherapy

Objective: To propose a model for teaching and supervising the termination process in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Method: Group supervision of the 12-week termination phase of psychotherapy with a patient who had been in psychotherapy with a senior resident for 2 years. Results: This supervisory method provided a positive termination experience for the patient and valuable group-teaching experience for residents at various levels in their training. Conclusion: A group supervisory teaching process is a particularly effective way of teaching the termination process and is more efficient in terms of time, energy, and dissemination of knowledge than a traditional one-on-one supervision model.

Assessment, Commitment and motivation in marital therapy.

The importance of a discrete assessment phase in the treatment of people with marital problems is emphasized. The consequence of such a phase in terms of clarification of treatment selection and engagement is discussed. Examples are presented which demonstrate the importance of attending to the factors of commitment to the marriage and motivation and capacity to work in therapy. Attention to these issues facilitates proper treatment planning designed to best suit the couples specific therapeutic needs.

Book Review: Psychotherapy: The Talking Cure: The Science behind PsychotherapyThe Talking Cure: The Science Behind Psychotherapy.VaughanSC. New York: Putnam; 1997. 208 p. Can

Susan Vaughan has written a book of 7 chapters, each using a dream and a different patients psychotherapeutic or psychoanalytic process to show how structural change can occur and how this is linked to change in the brain. At the end of the book, Vaughan offers 2 or 3 biological references for each chapter to support her hypotheses and speculation regarding how psychotherapy may create a change in neuronal networks within the association part of the cerebral cortex.