{B]eware of empty compliments - make your support as incisive as your feedback or interpretations.

The idea of using current distortions to re-create the past was part of an old, now abandoned, vision of the therapist as archaeologist, patiently scraping off the dust of decades to understand (and thus, in some mysterious manner, undo) the original trauma. It is a far better model to think of understanding the past in order to apprehend the present therapist-patient relationship.

I have always found quite useful Freud's formulation that the dream borrows building blocks from the day residue, but that for images to be important enough to become incorporated into it, they must be reinforced by older, meaningful, affect-laden concerns.

Someone's got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, who does he go see?

The establishment of an authentic relationship with patients, by its very nature, demands that we forego the power of the triumvirate of magic, mystery, and authority.