Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change
By addebook • Jun 9th, 2008 • Category: Medicine •
•
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change
By Steven C. Hayes, Kirk D. Strosahl, Kelly G. Wilson
Publisher: The Guilford Press
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1999-08-15
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1572304812
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781572304819
Binding: Hardcover
The prevailing view among therapists as well as clients is that a more vital life can be attained by overcoming negative thoughts and feelings. Yet despite efforts to achieve this goal, many individuals continue to suffer with behavior disorders, adjustment difficulties, and low life satisfaction. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique psychotherapeutic approach that addresses this issue by altering the very ground on which rational change strategies rest. Within a coherent theoretical and philosophical framework, ACT illuminates the ways clients understand and perpetuate their difficulties through language. The book shows how interventions based on metaphor, paradox, and experiential exercises can enable clients to break free of language traps and make contact with thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations that have been feared and avoided. Detailed guidelines are presented for helping clients recontextualize and accept these private events, develop greater clarity about personal values, and commit to needed behavior change. Providing in one volume a scientifically sound theory of psychopathology and a practical treatment model, and illustrated by a wealth of clinical examples, this is an important resource for practitioners and students in the full range of behavioral health care fields.
Summary: Still the core ACT book
Rating: 5
In my opinion, this is still the core ACT book to read. This book is just packed with a wealth of information, insights, and novel approaches to clinical problems. There is no other ACT book written to date that matches this one in its scope, overview, and coherence in terms of explaining the ACT model and linking it to the basic behavioral principles with underlie the approach. Even though I’ve had this book for almost a decade, I still refer to it’s dogeared and underlined pages almost every week. If you are a therapist interested in ACT, this book should be in your hands.
Summary: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:An Experiential Approach to Behaviour Change
Rating: 5
A really good overview and also in depth approach to a new therapy that could well be the next CBT - easy to read and with some very clear examples and analogies. I recommend it to anyone that has found that CBT has some gaps in regards to recurrance and behaviour change.
Summary: Challenging Current Thinking in Clinical Psychology
Rating: 5
Hayes and colleagues have made an excellent contribution with their book Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) by drawing together many years of theoretical work and practice into a very readable work. The first half of the book outlines the theoretical foundations of ACT. Many recent books in clinical psychology claim to offer a new psychotherapeutic technique or a new approach within a particular conceptual framework. In contrast, Hayes and colleagues present a new and comprehensive conceptual foundation for psychotherapy. They seek to challenge some of the cherished notions in mental health (e.g., that mental disorders always arise from abnormality) and critique some of the central ideas in many popular therapies (e.g., the idea in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that mental health will be improved by changing the content of one’s thoughts). Their argument identifies language and our use of it as both one of the key reasons for humanity’s success and our inability to rid ourselves of many mental health issues. For a reflective practitioner or academic, the arguments presented will give the reader much food for thought.
The second half of the book outlines the practice of ACT and as such illustrates the fist part. This sections is excellent in that even thought it uses language to describe ACT, it attempts to use the principles of ACT upon the reader and gives the reader examples to work though at the end of each chapter. Thus, the reader cannot emerge at the end of the book without having been changed by reading the book.
The ability to critique current thinking in clinical psychology is not novel, but the ability to present an alternative is much more rare. Hayes and colleages have done so and have presented it in a way that will be accessible to practitioners and researchers from many different theoretical orientations. A challenging and thought-provoking book.
Free download Links
http://rapidshare.com/files/117712148/1572304812.rar
Related Posts
