Effective Psychotherapy: The Silent Dialogue

Originally published in 1988, Effective Psychotherapy: The Silent Dialogue, reissued here with a new foreword by the author’s son, explores various debates within psychotherapy. The book offers a transtheoretical psychotherapy seeking to explain its covert processes – its “silent dialogue” – together with an accompanying operative strategy and set of technical principles. The attempt is made to define the patient’s dis-ease, to describe its etiology, to outline a remedial procedure, to specify a favorable outcome, and connect the latter to the former. The author stated that the merit of this attempt could only be established by its usefulness to other psychotherapists, but that just these kinds of attempts must be made if psychotherapy was ever to become a science. A secondary aim was to reflect something of the chaos that prevailed in the psychotherapy profession at the time. The intent was to reinforce the perception of an urgent need for some unifying theoretical base for operations. The author believed that perception was growing but needed further cultivation. Today it can be read in its historical context.