affectphobia.org, the web site for
Affect Phobia Therapy

Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (Guilford Press, 2003) was originally intended as a workbook to accompany Dr. McCullough's book Changing Character: Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy for Restructuring Defenses, Affects, and Attachments (Basic Books, 1997).

As we worked, our book grew far beyond its original scope. We retained our goal of writing a book for working therapists from a wide range of theoretical orientations and levels of experience, but we ended up with a book that stands on its own in its presentation of the heart and soul of this form of therapy. It brings Affect Phobia to a much more explicitly central role than it has in Changing Character.

While the subtitle refers to the book as a "manual," it does not offer a cookbook or cookie-cutter approach to therapy. Instead it offers an integrative theoretical framework that helps therapists to arrive collaboratively at clinically useful formulations during the course of therapy sessions. Numerous specific clinical techniques are offered which therapists may choose to use during the course of therapy, and there are exercises for readers who would like to have help converting declarative "book knowledge" into procedural knowledge that may be more likely to be helpful in the midst of an active psychotherapy session.

Finally, a word on "Short-Term": to us, short-term does not refer to a specific number of sessions or to a highly circumscribed set of problems for which the therapy is appropriate. Short-term refers to a commitment to bring meaningful change to patients in as little time as possible. Treating Affect Phobia contains a great deal of content that is helpful in both long- and short-term therapy, and a lot of guidance on how to tell when longer-term treatment may be necessary.

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