Barry L. Duncan

How can therapists become better at doing what they love, avoid burnout, and prevent client dropout? Respected therapist, trainer, and researcher Barry L. Duncan asserts that getting better at this work requires therapists to dedicate themselves to two key tasks: obtaining systematic client feedback and taking charge of their own development as a therapist. This book describes his Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS), which provides systematic feedback from clients, thereby enabling therapists to identify and target clients who aren amp rsquo t responding to traditional treatment before they drop out. Duncan examines the common factors inherent to all successful therapies and details the importance of the therapeutic alliance as the foundation of effective therapy. He encourages therapists to expand their theoretical breadth, think deeply about the lessons they learn from their clients, and integrate these lessons into their performance. His highly readable book details a five-step plan to take charge of personal and professional development, stave off disenchantment, and remain a vital force for change in clients amp rsquo lives.

Every interaction with a young person who is struggling is an opportunity for change. This highly practical guide helps school practitioners find effective solutions to academic and behavioral problems through brief counseling. It shows how to build on the ideas and resources that students, parents, and teachers bring to the intervention process, within an innovative, research-supported, time-limited framework. Extensive case material illustrates the authors' creative approach to building solutions and "busting problems" by putting clients in the driver's seat. Filled with real-world examples from both elementary and secondary settings, the book presents creative strategies for addressing disciplinary problems, poor academic performance, anxiety, compulsive behaviors, and other common difficulties.

Every interaction with a young person who is struggling is an opportunity for change. This highly practical guide helps school practitioners find effective solutions to academic and behavioral problems through brief counseling. It shows how to build on the ideas and resources that students, parents, and teachers bring to the intervention process, within an innovative, research-supported, time-limited framework. Extensive case material illustrates the authors' creative approach to building solutions and "busting problems" by putting clients in the driver's seat. Filled with real-world examples from both elementary and secondary settings, the book presents creative strategies for addressing disciplinary problems, poor academic performance, anxiety, compulsive behaviors, and other common difficulties.

In this controversial book, psychologists Barry Duncan and Scott Miller, cofounders of the Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change, challenge the traditional focus on diagnosis, "silver bullet" techniques, and magic pills, exposing them as empirically bankrupt practices that only diminish the role of clients and hasten therapy's extinction. Instead, they advocate for the long-ignored but most crucial factor in therapeutic success-the innate resources of the client. Based on extensive clinical research and case studies, The Heroic Client not only shows how to harness the client's powers of regeneration to make therapy effective, but also how to enlist the client as a partner to make therapy accountable. The Heroic Client inspires therapists to boldly rewrite the drama of therapy, recast clients in their rightful role as heroes and heroines of the therapeutic stage, and legitimize their services to third-party payers without the compromises of the medical model.

This book, a companion to the authors' Escape from Babel, describes therapy with a number of patients who had defeated numerous clinicians and become "veterans" of the system. Using a flexible approach that emphasizes relationship, hope, and a plan for the future, the authors turn these cases around, setting the clients on a path of independence and health.

The authors want readers to shake their allegiance to masters and models and focus on the basics of relationship, hope, and a plan for the future. Theirs is a simple but effective approach.