Relational Therapy for Personality Disorders

Book excerpt: An important breakthrough in the treatment of one of the most challenging classes of psychological disorders This book introduces psychotherapists to Integrative Relational Psychotherapy (IRP), a dynamic new approach to the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders that capitalizes on recent major advances in the fields of personology and therapy systems theory. Combining a rigorous biopsychosocial model of personality with a relational framework for patient assessment and treatment planning, IRP is designed to produce rapid and sustained systemic change in patients suffering from virtually all DSM-identified personality disorders. With the help of numerous case studies and vignettes drawn from his own practice, Dr. Jeffrey Magnavita provides a remarkably lucid, fully referenced presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of IRP. He arms you with tested relational assessment tools, psychometrics, and interviewing techniques that can easily be incorporated into individual, couples, and family therapy practices. And he develops clear guidelines for creating customized, highly focused treatment strategies--for individual clients or families--that integrate an array of systemic intervention modalities to be administered sequentially or in combination.