Description
Inner Strengths is the first book to meet the need for a comprehensive treatment of approaches to ego-strengthening in psychotherapy. It provides a historical breakthrough in the history of ego-strengthening education, and explores contemporary psychodynamic, object relations, self-psychology, ego state, and transpersonal theoretical models for understanding how and why ego-strengthening occurs.
Written by two experienced psychotherapists, who were active in developing the newer, projective-evocative ego-strengthening techniques, this book emphasizes the utilization of patients' inner resources. They survey the history of ego-strengthening efforts and show how that which has been considered intrinsically hypnotic connects with the great traditions of psychotherapy. Additionally, they offer step-by-step instructions for a diversity of ego-strengthening methods that can be used for patient self-care, internal boundary formation, and personality maturation in a wide range of clinical conditions. Their discussion of the fundamental concepts of ego-strengthening draws on their theoretical and clinical explorations of dynamic internal resources such as memory, strength, wisdom, self-soothing, and love.
Throughout the book, theory is balanced by an unusual richness of extended clinical examples and a wide variety of practical ego-strengthening scripts. This classic edition is essential reading for seasoned clinicians of hypnosis and beginners alike.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Classic Edition by Shirley McNeal Foreword by Stephen Gilligan Foreword by John G Watkins and Helen H Watkins Preface 1. Ego-Strengthening: The Therapeutic Tradition 2. Ego-Strengthening: The Classical Hypnotic Tradition 3. Ego-Strengthening: The Ericksonian Tradition 4. The Ego-State Model in Hypnotic and Nonhypnotic Psychotherapy 5. The Utilization of Time as a Vehicle for Projective/Evocative Ego-Strengthening 6. The Ego: Its Composition 7. Internal Self-Soothing and the Development of the Self 8. Inner Love: Projective/Evocative Ego-Strengthening with Inner Resources of Love 9. Good Fences Make Good Neighbours: Internal Boundary Formation 10. Other Projective/Evocative Techniques 11. Ego-Strengthening in the Treatment of Performance Anxiety 12. Ego-Strengthening in the Treatment of Complex Clinical Syndromes 13. Ego-Strengthening with Posttraumatic and Dissociative Disorders I: Overview, Stabilization and the Repair of Developmental Deficits 14. Ego-Strengthening With Posttraumatic and Dissociative Disorders II: Uncovering and Integration 15. The Strengthened Ego and the Transpersonal Self in Living and Dying Appendix References
