Emotion-Focused Cognitive Therapy (Power/Emotion-Focused Cognitive Therapy) || Therapy

✍ Scribed by Power, Mick

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 228 KB
• Edition: 1
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 0470683236
• DOI: 10.1002/9780470660065.ch3

✦ Synopsis

In this chapter, we make some preliminary remarks about common factors that operate across all types of therapies, irrespective of whether the different therapies acknowledge such factors, before going on to consider the specifics of Emotion-Focused Cognitive Therapy in the next chapter.

Most people have one or two friends in their social networks who are good to talk to and who provide sound advice (unless of course you are a professional therapist in which case most of your social network may consist of other therapists -unfortunately!). These individuals have some of the skilful qualities that one would expect good therapists to possess (Frank, 1982), so this chapter provides an overview of these common factors in therapy and in therapists. We do this by arguing that therapy can be best considered in terms of three phases (Power, 2002; Power & Freeman, 2007). The three phases are summarized as follows.

The first phase is the development of a trusting relationship between the therapist and the client. For example, you meet a stranger on a train and within no time at all, you seem to be talking about the most personal issues troubling you, as if you had known this stranger for most of your life. So what are the qualities and factors relevant to building a good therapeutic alliance from the start of therapy? And how does the therapist handle conflicts in the alliance that result from holidays, or not meeting the demands of the client, or unsuccessful