A Primer on Working with Resistance

By Martha Stark

Book Overview

"Martha Stark's primer on resistance is a unique book. It takes as the heart of the clinical problem the patient's reluctance to change, that ubiquitous and paradoxical phenomenon of our work in which people come to us asking for help in changing, and then do their level best to keep change from happening... This is a work which is at once a practical guide and a theoretical tour de force. Readers who journey in this slim volume with Dr. Stark will return from their travels to their practice much educated, having encountered new ideas and old ones in new forms, better able to face the everyday travails of psychotherapy." -David E. Scharff, M.D. A Jason Aronson Book

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568210930
• ISBN13: 9781568210933
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Jason Aronson
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Look no further-this book is the clinician's "pearl of great price"!

As others have aptly noted, Dr. Stark's writing is exemplary for its clarity. Her prose style is lucid and user-friendly. Her own brilliance notwithstanding, her explanations are couched in direct, plain language. Her authorial tone is unfailingly unpretentious and respectful- to the reader, and also to the patient- about whom and for whose benefit she has written. The book consists of three logically delineated parts. In Part One, Dr. Stark explains that resistance, in its many forms, always boils down to a failure to grieve. With exquisite parsimony, she equates the failure to grieve with avoidance of reality. Succinctly, she defines mental health as not needing the facts- about others, or oneself, or the world- to be other than they are. Part Two is devoted to explaining, first, how to listen well in relation to resistance, and second, how specifically to respond to the patient's particular need at any given moment in the therapeutic dialogue. Her masterful and enlightening discussion of the clinical transferences in Part Three culminates in her contention that the patient's "attainment of mature hope" is the "raison d'etre" of the psychotherapeutic endeavor. Most compelling and invaluable of all, however, is her thorough, logically impeccable, and eminently practical enumeration of the kinds of statements needed to work expertly with a patient's resistance. The clinician who "reads, marks, learns and inwardly digests" Dr. Stark's uniquely designed "toolkit" of carefully calibrated therapeutic statements will have a credible claim to confidence and competence. A better guide to working with resistance is hard to imagine. Any clinician who would learn, from a true master, what to say, and when, and why, and how, need look no further. Dr. Stark's "Primer" is the clinician's "pearl of great price." (Review by Samuel Miller, M. A., Th.D., LMHC, NCC)-[...] 08-07-09.

A clear, consise explanation of the theraputic relationship

Dr. Stark weaves together the viewpoints of many different schools of theraputic thought while bringing her own facinating insights to bear in this wonderful book. Other authors in this field could take a lesson from the clarity of her prose. The best book I have ever read on the subject. Anyone seeking to better understand the theraputic relationship should read this book.