The Dependent Personality

By Robert F. Bornstein

Book Overview

Virtually every mental health professional has worked with patients who are overly dependent -- patients who have trouble asserting themselves within and outside therapy, alienate others with a pervasive pattern of clinging insecurity, and undermine their social and work relationships with frequent requests for help and reassurance. Such patients have always presented unique treatment challenges for therapists, but in today's managed care-driven environment, with its emphasis on time-limited therapy and cost-effective treatment, the overly dependent patient can be even more challenging. The Dependent Patient: A Practitioner's Guide presents an integrated, empirically based framework for diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of dependent psychotherapy patients. Rather than being bound to a single theoretical view, The Dependent Patient integrates ideas and findings from a broad array of theoretical perspectives. This book will be a valuable resource for any practitioner who works in an inpatient, outpatient, rehabilitation, or day treatment/partial hospitalization setting, regardless of the practitioner's background and level of training.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591472032
• ISBN13: 9781591472032
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 10.4"

Customer Reviews

Intended especially for practitioners in the field

The Dependent Patient: A Practitioner's Guide by Robert F. Bornstein (Professor of Psychology, Gettsburgy College) offers mental health professionals practical tools for dealing with overly dependent patients - individuals who have trouble asserting themselves within and outside therapy, alienate others with their pattern of clinging insecurity, and undermine their own relationships with overly frequent requests for help and reassurance. In today's managed-care health environment with stricter time limits on therapy, helping overly dependent patients is even more daunting a task. A technical discussion intended especially for practitioners in the field, The Dependent Patient covers how to quantify dependency, distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy dependency, various approaches to treatment including psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic-experiential perspectives, and much more. A welcome and recommended contribution to mental health reference shelves.