Becoming a Therapist

Suzanne Bender, MD, is a Staff Psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Edward Messner, MD, until his death in 2006, was a Senior Psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

I. The Consultation
1. First Contact
2. The First Moments
3. Initiating an Alliance and Assessing Safety
4. Enhancing the Therapeutic Alliance and Eliciting History
5. Collecting a Psychosocial History and Screening for Common Psychological Disorders
6. Formulating a Treatment Plan

II. Frame and Variations
7. The Frame
8. Setting the Fee and Billing
9. Telephone Calls: From Dependencies to Emergencies
10. No-Shows, Late Arrivals, and Late Departures
11. Confidentiality and Its Limits

III. Chemistry
12. Substance Abuse
13. Integrating Psychopharmacology with Psychotherapy

IV. Therapeutic Dilemmas
14. Management of Impasses
15. Empathic Lapses
16. Transference and Countertransference
17. Termination