Robert Rosenbaum

• Consultant at Booverie

Before characterizing any problem as a somaticizing or conversion disorder, it is important to consider all possible medical diagnoses. Given the current fragmented state of health care in America, therapists should not assume all medical possibilities have been adequately explored. Furthermore, many clients have had negative experiences with medic...

In this portion of the clinical exchange, Drs. Michael Axelman, Robert Rosenbaum, and Golan Shahar discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about their concepts of this case, as described in their separate articles in this issue of the journal, in the case of Ms. T, a geriatric client with long-standing somatic complaints and attachment issues.

When mindfulness is divorced from its Buddhist foundations, it runs the danger of becoming a reified technique. Paradoxically, this lessens its potential for transformation in psychotherapy or behavioral medicine. Traditionally, mindfulness is a skillful means to encourage nonattachment by loosening identification with the contents of consciousness...

Studies and treatments for the symptomatic menopausal woman with sleep complaints have been reviewed elsewhere. This article, as part of the clinical review series on the comorbid symptomatic menopausal woman, aims to examine the evidence for diagnosis and treatment of women who present with distressing sleep symptoms that they attribute to menopau...

While cognitive complaints are common during the menopausal transition, measurable cognitive decline occurs infrequently, often due to underlying psychiatric or neurological disease. To clarify the nature, etiology and evidence for cognitive and memory complaints during midlife, at the time of the menopausal transition, we have critically reviewed...

Psychological literature on trauma usually focuses on pathology that results from trauma and pays little attention to positive out-comes. This article presents a phenomenological inquiry into the experiences of a profoundly traumatized group of people—parents whose son or daughter has been murdered—to assess if they were able to experience a positi...

Discusses hope as not always an asset for the client or the psychotherapist: many difficult conditions can be described as diseases of hope. Hope becomes diseased partially as a function of its unlikelihood, but also when it leads to disparagement of the present, to mindless sacrifices, and to rigid attitudes or behaviors. The authors present the w...

Current social policies encouraging severe punishment of crime fall disproportionately on ethnic minority groups, particularly African-Americans. This can provoke psychological reactions which can eventually lead to symptom formations in the members of these groups. The connection between the clinical presentation and the social experience of the m...

Formulating psychotherapy cases runs the risk of emphasizing clients' difficulties while ignoring their strengths, narrowing the field of possible helpful interventions, arid fitting clients into preconceived theoretical notions. While some fomuilation is necessary and inevitable, it is helpful to constantly reformulate, with special attention to f...

Synthesizing individual and family therapies can founder if the underlying epistemological assumptions concerning "what is self" are not taken into account. Most individual therapies assume self "really" exists as a relatively stable internal entity, the repository of residues of experience where traits, memories, et cetera are organized via intern...

In a study of single-session visits with 58 consecutive clients at an outpatient clinic (M. Hoyt et al, 1992), the authors approached each 1st interview as if it could be a complete therapy. At the end of the session, clients were offered a choice between "single-session therapy" and continuing in ordinary brief treatment. 58% of the clients felt t...

Strategic therapy can be broadly defined as any therapy in which the therapist is willing to take on the responsibility for influencing people and takes an active role in planning a strategy for promoting change (DeShazer, 1985; Fisch, Weakland, & Segal, 1982; Madanes, 1980; Papp, 1980; Rosenbaum, 1990; Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, & Bodin, 1974)....

By choosing to read this book, you show a willingness to entertain new ideas, expand your therapeutic knowledge, and generally enjoy the fruits of curiosity and enquiry. Since beginning a new chapter has certain uncertainties, it’s important to read critically to pick out certain ideas you may find new or valuable. You may already be anticipating w...

The psychotherapeutic facilitation of “decisive moments of life,” such as that described above, is not necessarily a function of treatment duration. Even a single session of therapy can sometimes provide a pivotal moment, invoking the “magic force dwelling in beginnings” that guards us and helps us to live.

Investigated the use of relationship dilemmas as a process variable for determining the cause of difficulties in psychotherapy. Relationship dilemmas occur when patients impose role relationship models (schemata of the self or other) on interactions with the therapist. Seven dilemmas were identified by judges who viewed videotapes of therapy with 2...

Argues that resistance to psychotherapy integration in therapists stems from differences in their styles rather than substantive differences in therapy content. A therapist's style may be linked to his or her identity, and a change in style may cause an emotional reaction (identity crisis). It is suggested that therapists should alter their attitud...

Studied global judgments of case difficulty made by expert clinicians (a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a social worker) after viewing a complete session of psychotherapy. The 2nd session of 48 short-term (12 sessions) psychotherapy patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, adjustment reaction, major depressive episode, panic disorder, or unc...

We studied the relationship of dispositional and process variables with outcome in 52 bereaved patients given time-limited dynamic psychotherapy. Outcomes were generally favorable in symptom relief and improvement in relationship and occupational functioning. Patients' symptoms improved more than did their social and work functioning. Pretreatment...

Constructed a rater measure of patient motivation for psychotherapy to include the concepts, such as libidinal drives, degree of suffering experienced, ego-derived recognition of reality demands, conscious readiness, self-actualization motives, and secondary gain, used in previous studies, with added items for theoretical completeness. Additional n...

Recent articles on paradoxical interventions tend to view them as something given by a therapist to a patient, thus unintentionally adopting a unidirectional view of causality and an outmoded epistemology. It is postulated that change takes place in the context of a patient-therapist relationship and that when that relationship becomes paradoxical...