Preliminary results of a video-assisted psychotherapist workshop in alliance strategies.

This study examined the preliminary results of an integrative, video-assisted training workshop aimed at helping psychotherapists build strong therapeutic relationships with their clients. Participants were 57 clinicians across five community mental health clinics, who were randomly assigned to the brief alliance-training workshop (in which they participated prior to starting treatment with a new client) or to a delayed-training control condition. Outcomes assessed included therapist-reported use of alliance strategies during Session 1, therapist-rated alliance quality after Session 1, and client engagement across the first 4 weeks.

A manual-based psychodynamic therapy for treatment-resistant borderline personality disorder.

The authors introduce a manual-based treatment, labeled dynamic deconstructive psychotherapy, developed for those patients with borderline personality disorder who are most difficult to engage in therapy, such as those having co-occurring substance use disorders. This treatment model is based on the hypothesis that borderline pathology and related behaviors reflect impairment in specific neurocognitive functions, including association, attribution, and alterity that form the basis for a coherent and differentiated self. Dynamic deconstructive psychotherapy aims to activate and remediate neurocognitive self-capacities by facilitating elaboration of affect-laden interpersonal experiences and integration of attributions, as well as providing novel experiences in the patient-therapist relationship that promote self-other differentiation.