First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book presents principles and methods for working with emotion in psychotherapy to address the core maladaptive processes that cause anxiety, depression, and other common mental health disorders. Mental health providers confront emotional suffering every day, yet working with emotion is rarely explicitly taught in most clinical graduate programs. There is evidence that emotional experience in therapy relates to therapy outcome, across multiple diagnoses. This research has given rise to strategies that address the core maladaptive processes that cause distress and dysfunction, rather than specific diagnoses. Methods described in this book can help clients with all types of disorders to 'arrive at,' or fully experience, their painful maladaptive emotions, and then 'leave' these emotions by accessing new, adaptive emotions. These methods include helping clients sit with painful feelings, access bodily felt experience, identify unmet needs, and articulate the meaning of an emotion. Excerpts from moment-to-moment clinical dialogues help demonstrate techniques such as memory reconsolidation, providing corrective emotional experiences, chair work, and imaginal re-entry to past situations.

This book examines shame and anger, their relationship with one another, and how mental health providers can work with each of them to produce therapeutic change. Although very different emotions, shame and anger are highly related in therapy. Because shame and anger have both adaptive and maladaptive forms, intervention differs depending on what type of shame or anger is being experienced and in what sequence they occur. Therapists need to consider the type of shame or anger they are dealing with and how the two emotions interact before they can make process diagnoses of what is occurring at different moments in a session. This book emphasizes the benefits of accessing and experiencing shame and anger viscerally to promote emotion change in therapy. It teaches therapists how to help clients access their shame or anger in a safe therapeutic setting to make this emotion amenable to transformation, and create new narratives based on the transformed feelings. 

Emotion-Focused Therapy provides an introduction to the theory, history, research, and practice of this emotion-centered, humanistic approach to psychotherapy. Emotion-focused therapy is a complete theory of human functioning based on the adaptive role of emotion and founded on the idea that emotional change is central to enduring change. This therapy emphasizes the awareness, acceptance, understanding, and transformation of emotion, and proposes that emotions themselves have an adaptive potential that, if activated, can help clients to change. Emotion-focused therapists help clients to experience their emotions in the safe setting of therapy so that, rather than avoiding or controlling their feelings, clients learn to use them as a guide to what is important or necessary in their lives. In this book, Leslie S. Greenberg presents and explores this versatile and useful approach, its theory, history, therapy process, primary change mechanisms, the empirical basis for its effectiveness, and recent developments that have refined the theory and expanded how it may be practiced. This revised edition includes a wealth of recent research findings on important constructs such as emotional needs, as well as new developments in the use of emotion-focused therapy in treating anxiety disorders.

In this seminal volume, master clinician and founder of emotion-focused therapy (EFT) Leslie Greenberg presents a comprehensive overview of EFT—a treatment that helps clients identify, experience, accept, explore, interpret, transform, and flexibly manage their emotions. Essentially, the approach helps clients increase their emotional intelligence and achieve greater well-being.

In previous books, Leslie S. Greenberg has demonstrated the importance of integrating emotional work into therapy and has laid out a compelling model of therapeutic change. Building on these foundations, Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy sheds new light on the process and technique of intervention with specific emotions. Filled with illustrative case examples, the book shows clinicians how to identify a given emotion, discern its role in a client's self-understanding, and understand how its expression is furthering or inhibiting the client's progress. Of vital importance, the authors help readers think more differentially about emotions; to distinguish, for example, between avoided emotional pain and chronic dysfunctional bad feelings, between adaptive sadness and maladaptive depression, and between overcontrolled anger and underregulated rage. A conceptual overview and framework for intervention are delineated, and special attention is given throughout to the integration of emotion and cognition in therapeutic work.

This influential volume provides a comprehensive introduction to emotionally focused therapy (EFT): its theoretical foundations, techniques, and clinical practice. EFT is a structured approach to couple therapy that integrates intrapsychic and interpersonal perspectives to help couples create new, more satisfying interactional patterns. Since the original publication of this book, EFT has been implemented and tested with growing numbers of couples in a wide range of settings. The authors, who codeveloped the approach, illuminate the power of emotional experience in relationships and in the process of therapeutic change. The book is richly illustrated with case examples and session transcripts.

Ya en libros anteriores, Leslie S. Greenberg habia demostrado la importancia de integrar el trabajo emocional en la terapia, empezando a elaborar asi un modelo convincente del cambio terapeutico. En consecuencia, el presente libro se basa en esos principios y se dedica a explicar minuciosamente el proceso y la tecnica de intervencion con emociones concretas. Ensena al clinico como identificar una emocion determinada, de que modo discernir su papel en la comprension que el cliente tiene de si mismo y, en fin, que puede hacer para entender la manera en que esa expresion fomenta o inhibe el progreso hacia las metas de la terapia. Se trata de una ayuda que resulta de vital importancia, sobre todo a la hora de distinguir, por ejemplo, entre la evitacion del dolor emocional y los sentimientos negativos cronicamente disfuncionales, entre la tristeza adaptativa y la depresion desadaptativa, asi como entre el enfado excesivamente controlado y la rabia incontrolada. Asi, al arrojar nueva luz sobre el poder de las emociones, tanto en la organizacion de la experiencia del cliente como en lo que se refiere a la autocomprension y el cambio, el texto resultara imprescindible, primero, para todos aquellos terapeutas que deseen aprovechar ese poder con perspicacia y creatividad en su trabajo y, luego, para quienes prefieran utilizarlo como lectura complementaria en cursos universitarios de psicoterapia.

Integrating the work of leading client-centered, gestalt, interpersonal, focusing, and process-oriented therapists, " Handbook of Experiential Psychotherapy" covers both conceptual foundations and current treatment applications. Contributors present well-articulated approaches to treating depression, PTSD, anxiety, and other problems, emphasizing the need to work with the client's own moment-by-moment experience of disturbing states and processes. The volume delineates a variety of experiential methods--from working with clients to symbolize bodily felt sense, evoke memories, and express intense feelings, to helping them reflect on their experience, maintain gains from session to session, and create new meanings for themselves. The role of the therapist's relational stance in promoting particular emotional processes is also examined, and newly developed models of experiential diagnosis and case formulation are described.

The study of psychotherapy has often been limited to the ways in which cognitive and behavioral processes promote personal change. Introducing a ground breaking perspective, Greenberg and Safran's compelling new work argues that the presently-felt experience of emotional material in therapy forms a vital underpinning in the generation of change. By including emotion as a psychotherapeutic catalyst, the book offers a more complete and encompassing approach to the process of psychotherapy than has ever before been available.
EMOTION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY draws from the literature of both clinical and experimental psychology to provide a critical review of theory and research on the role of emotion in the process of change. Providing a general theoretical framework for understanding the impact of affect in therapy, this unique volume describes specific change events in which emotions enhance the achievement of therapeutic goals. Case examples and extensive transcripts vividly portray a variety of affective modes--such as completing emotional expression, accessing previously unacknowledged feelings, and restructuring emotions--and illustrate in clear, practical terms how certain processes apply to particular patient problems. Moving beyond the standard approaches to therapy, this volume offers an integrated approach that carefully consider's the client's state in the session that must be amenable to intervention as well as any given intervention and its resulting changes.
Its attention to both the theoretical and practical considerations of implementing a balanced psychotherapeutic approach--combining behavioral, cognitive, and affective modes--makes this an invaluable volume forpractitioners and researchers of all orientations. The book will be of particular interest to clinicians seeking integrative approaches to psychotherapy, and to academic psychologists concerned with expanding the paradigm of cognitive psychology.

While emotions are often given a negative connotation people are described as being "too emotional" or as needing to "control their emotions" this book demonstrates that emotions are organizing processes that enhance adaptation and problem solving. Within an experiential therapy framework, the volume shows how to work with moment-by-moment emotional processes to resolve various psychological difficulties. The first two sections introduce the process experiential approach to treatment. Exploring the interrelationships among emotion, cognition, and change, the authors develop a powerful, clinically relevant theory of human functioning. The third section, a detailed treatment manual, outlines the general principles and methods of therapy and provides step-by-step directions for six specific types of interventions. Excerpts from actual transcripts exemplify the various methods, illuminating the moment-by-moment process for both the client and the therapist.

This influential volume provides a comprehensive introduction to emotionally focused therapy (EFT): its theoretical foundations, techniques, and clinical practice. EFT is a structured approach to couple therapy that integrates intrapsychic and interpersonal perspectives to help couples create new, more satisfying interactional patterns. Since the original publication of this book, EFT has been implemented and tested with growing numbers of couples in a wide range of settings. The authors, who codeveloped the approach, illuminate the power of emotional experience in relationships and in the process of therapeutic change. The book is richly illustrated with case examples and session transcripts.

The authors of this volume investigate the role of emotion in the development and maintenance of psychological problems, and in effecting psychological change. They examine emotion as it is conceptualized and used in three of the most widely practiced approaches today--psychodynamic, cognitive behavior, and emotion-focused psychotherapy. In each chapter, the authors discuss the impact of emotion on child development and learning, the relationship between emotion and motivation, and the ways in which emotion can be harnessed in treatment to improve psychological functioning and strengthen interpersonal relationships. Clinical vignettes show readers how to arouse, identify, and channel emotions in therapy, while also utilizing emotion to develop and maintain an effective therapeutic alliance.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) - characterized by near-constant worry that often coincides with intense feelings of shame and despair - is a highly treatment-resistant disorder, with clients often relapsing after making some progress. Master therapists Jeanne Watson and Leslie Greenberg argue, however, that emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is uniquely capable of targeting the maladaptive emotional schemes that underlie GAD and helping clients maintain lasting, positive change. In this practical guide, Watson and Greenberg teach mental health practitioners how to employ EFT methods in their work with GAD clients. The authors first review EFT's conceptualization of GAD, emphasizing the key role that emotion plays in pervasive anxiety. They then translate those foundational principles into detailed techniques and strategies as they walk readers through the EFT process, beginning with the establishment of a healing therapeutic relationship. Chapters review different stages of EFT, describing specific therapeutic exercises, such as empty-chair and two-chair tasks, that allow clients to vocalize and directly address their deep-rooted emotional pain, anxieties, and relational injuries with significant others. Through this work, clients eventually learn to self-soothe and transform their maladaptive coping mechanisms into healthier ones. Sample client-therapist dialogues demonstrate how these EFT techniques can be applied in actual practice.

In psychotherapy, as in life, all significant emotions are embedded in important stories, and all significant stories revolve around important emotional themes. Yet, despite the interaction between emotion and narrative processes, emotion-focused therapy (EFT) and narrative-informed therapies have evolved as separate clinical approaches. In this book, Lynne Angus and Leslie Greenberg address this gap and present a groundbreaking, empirically based model that integrates working with narrative and emotion processes in EFT. According to Angus and Greenberg's narrative-informed approach to EFT, all successful psychotherapy entails the articulation, revision, and deconstruction of clients' maladaptive life stories in favor of more life-enhancing alternatives. Because emotions and narratives interact to form meaning and sense of self, the evocation and articulation of emotions is critical to changing life narratives. Individual chapters describe how the interaction between emotion and narrative creates a constantly evolving sense of self; how clinicians can address both narrative and emotion processes to help clients create more adaptive, empowering meanings and sense of self; and the importance of a strong therapeutic alliance. Engaging, in-depth case studies at the end of the book illustrate how the model can be applied to treatment of depression and emotional trauma.