Schema Therapy: A Practitioner's Guide

by Janet S. Klosko, Jeffrey E. Young, Marjorie E. Weishaar

Book Overview

Designed to meet the formidable challenges of treating personality disorders and other complex difficulties, schema therapy combines proven cognitive-behavioral techniques with elements of other widely practiced therapies. This book--written by the model's developer and two of its leading practitioners--is the first major text for clinicians wishing to learn and use this popular approach. Described are innovative ways to rapidly conceptualize challenging...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572308389
• ISBN13: 9781572308381
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Guilford Publications
• Length: 436 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Excellent book!

I bought this after seeing Jeff Young's introductory workshop on Schematherapy (I'm a psychologist). The book added depth to what I learned in his excellent workshop and enabled me to begin implementing Young's techniques. This approach has empirical evidence demonstrating its effectiveness with people who have Borderline Personality Disorder. I strongly recommend the book (and Young's workshop) to mental health professionals who are working with this population.

Pretty Good

This book is fantastic! It really explains why some people end up with personality disorders and how to go about having a person see their dysfunctional patterns. The book is well structured with good outlines of the various schemata. However, after about page 70, it gets a bit repetitive. The case illustrations are helpful, though I couldn't help noticing how neatly well packaged they were. Schema therapy definitely provides an excellent framework within which to conceptualize personality disorders. Apparently it is more helpful to borderline personality disorder than psychodynamic therapy. So,in summary, while I really appreciated how personality disorders were conceptualized, I found the book a bit repetitive... For a more 'academic' approach, you might want to try the Handbook of Personality Disorders.

The Schema Therapy Bible

This highly professional yet clearly articulated book covers the history, concepts, and techniques of Schema Therapy. While this therapeutic approach originated in cognitive therapy, it has evolved into a systematic ecclecticism that includes cognitive, behavioral, experiential, and other useful techniques for identifying and healing schemas, modes, coping patterns, etc. Highly recommended for the professional with an interest in helping clients alter personality disorders and other disturbances that are resistant to other therapeutic approaches. Fred P. Gallo, PhD, author of "Energy Psychology" and co-author of "The Neurophysics of Human Behavior"

Thought provoking development in integrative therapy

As a psychodynamically trained therapist, I have sensed for many years that a 'pure' approach to therapy has severe limitations. This led me to get further training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and to use this with my clients - to some good effect. However, I felt uncomfortable using this 'either, or' approach to therapy (either psychodynamic OR CBT) and have been trying for a long time to work out a way of integrating these two approaches in my practice. So reading Jeffrey Young's book is like reading something that I should have written myself! I keep thinking, 'Oh yes, that's just what I find too!', and 'Hey, that's MY idea!'. In other words, I find this an eminently practical and useful outline of a model of therapy that more or less perfectly describes my own approach to working with clients. What is useful to me in particular are the 18 maladaptive schemas, and the corresponding system of coping with them. THe questionnaires (available from www.schematherapy.com) which can help clients to identify their own particular combination of problem schemas and coping styles forms an excellent basis for rich, rewarding, collaborative therapy. I am full of admiration for the three authors who produced this volume. I look forward to attending some of the workshops when they come my way in the UK. A thouroughly recommended read.

Excellent presentation of an effective therapy

As a psychologist who has utilized Schema Therapy for several years I found that this work far surpassed my expectations. Schema Therapy, which originally evolved from cognitive therapy, integrates theory and technques from various fields, including behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, gestalt therapy and object relations. This theoretical synthesis is presented in a remarkably straightforward manner that even the beginning therapist will find easy to follow and utilize. The book is highly readable and loaded with specific clinical interventions. The last two chapters, on treating borderlines and narcissists, are worth the price of the book alone.I'd recommend this book to any therapist from any orientation. Cognitive and behavior therapists will find the focus on early childhood experience and deeper emotions to be be a useful extension of knowledge presented in a logical down to earth manner. Therapists from more traditional backgrounds will benefit from this exposure to an effective treatment which has systematic recommendations for treating long term problems.