Can You Be Like Erickson?

For my keynote address at the Erickson Congress in Puerto Vallarta, I shared a memorable experience when I was confronted with the urgent needs of a former patient of Milton Erickson. The man was experiencing a full-blown psychotic episode. He had the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and was absolutely insistent that he must “find Erickson” […]

CBT in the Real World

In the past few months I’ve seen several comments about how CBT is “constrained” by treatment protocols. Apparently, some practitioners have the impression that CBT is “cookbook” approach where the therapist takes a manualized treatment protocol and imposes it on the client without tailoring it to the client’s needs. They seem to think that if […]

Let Me Sleep On It: CBT for Insomnia

The February, 2016 edition of Consumer Reports recommends CBT as an alternative to medication for chronic insomnia (see https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/08/how-did-you-sleep-last-night/index.htm for some of what they say about insomnia). CBT for insomnia (CBT-I) combines “standard” CBT with cognitive and behavioral interventions specifically focused on insomnia. There is a substantial body of research supporting the effectiveness of CBT-I […]

Is the Effectiveness of CBT Fading?

A recent meta-analysis published under the provocative title “The Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as an Anti-Depressive Treatment is Falling: A Meta-Analysis” (Johnsen & Friborg, 2015) has provoked considerable discussion (and some gloating on the Internet by those who are opposed to CBT). The authors computed the effect-sizes found in 70 studies of Cognitive Behavioral […]

Tell Me a Story: The Power of Storytelling

“Information brings knowledge, but stories bring wisdom.” These words guide my clinical work more than any others, for I have learned that it is the power of the patient’s story, rather than that of the patient’s dogged data, that defines and informs psychotherapy’s curative properties. Or, as Mark Twain once put it, “Never let the […]

The Adolescent Saboteur

We frequently use the term “self-sabotage” to describe behavior that, at least on the surface, appears to work to the patient’s disadvantage. Wikipedia defines sabotage as “a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity or corporation through subversion, obstruction, disruption, destruction or underhand tactics…one who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. Saboteurs typically try to […]

Interesting Study of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy vs CBT in the Treatment of Bulimia

An interesting study has been published recently that compares psychoanalytic psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of bulimia (abstract of the study). I thought it worth noting here.