`Bad Therapy` by: Kottler & Carlson

In the book Bad Therapy : Master Therapists Share Their Worst Failures ' by Jeffrey A Kottler it shows how other therapists use psychotherapy and how the therapists deem certain sessions as bad therapy . When the authors began this work their aim was to create an opportunity by which some of the most prominent therapists in the field could talk about what they considered to be their worst work in to encourage other practitioners to be more open to admitting their mistakes . The authors are among the 22 therapists who agreed to participate in

the project . The result of the interviews , all conducted over the telephone is this collection of short and very readable accounts . The credentials of the list of contributors to the book are impressive . In the preface the authors explained that they selected the participants because all were prominent and influential , had a body of published work and years of clinical experience . Arnold A . Lazarus , a pioneer of Behavior Therapy is among the . Between them , the authors alone have written over 70 books on counseling and psychotherapy

The majority of these therapists are working in a public professional life . They write books , run training courses , lecture and demonstrate their techniques to large professional audiences . They produce tapes and videos of their work . Throughout the text there are many references to the anxiety stirred by the nature of the subject on which these therapists were asked to reflect this because of the possibility of a lawsuit and laws . Each chapter is a narrative account of the conversation the authors had with the therapist who was asked to talk about incidences in his or her clinical practice which evoked uncomfortable memories , feelings of regret or guilt , or a sense of failure . Strong emphasis is laid upon what can be learned from the mistakes . I found this and the more general reflections on the theme of what makes therapy bad helpful to me considering a career in the clinical practice

The refreshing honesty of the therapist 's accounts that gave me a sense of the tensions that arise during these sessions , projecting an image of perfection , and stories of miraculous successes (p .189 ) or the stunning failures (p . ix . These words made me reflect on the nature of idealization and its opposite , devaluation on what success and failure means in therapy . It also helped me to reflect on the high expectations we put on ourselves as therapist to train well and to be viewed as doing a good job in the eyes of our clients , peers , trainers and supervisors . There is an uncertainty to what we view as good and what is bad in therapy . Good and bad can become intertwined with emotionally charged meaning along the success-failure road and their use is dependent upon expectations of good techniques or good interpretations . The value of the ordinary human contact with the client can get caught up in an anxiety ridden preoccupation with the right way of doing things

At the...