1st Edition
The Therapist Within Applying Reflective Psychotherapy to Help Alleviate Suffering
The Therapist Within introduces an original, systematic approach for understanding and treating suffering clients through reflective processes, providing readers with the essential tools needed to alleviate their own personal suffering and live a fuller, more enjoyable life.
Developed from knowledge gleaned from his five decades of clinical work and his own journey with anxiety, isolation, and despair, Dr. Brenner’s novel reflective psychotherapy is influenced by psychoanalytic psychotherapy, relational therapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Advancing this innovative therapeutic method, the book provides a strong framework for guiding clients through the process of reflecting upon and re-encountering their life history, consciousness, inner and outer worldview, intrapersonal dynamics, and relationships, as well as for applying specific methods of intervention.
Rejecting conventional approaches to therapy, this book provides therapists with a holistic treatment plan to use with clients and will teach all readers to use self-reflection, meditation, and journal writing to achieve a greater sense of wellbeing and psychological strength.
Part One: Theoretical Framework
Chapter 1: Empathic Envelope
Chapter 2: Creative Connection
Chapter 3: Symbiotic-Compensatory System
Chapter 4: Pathological Structures
Chapter 5: Encasing Worldview
Chapter 6: Functional Structures
Chapter 7: Self-Reflective System
Part Two: Psychotherapy
Chapter 8: Psychotherapeutic Process
Chapter 9: Dreams and Visions
Chapter 10: Journal Writing and Meditation
Chapter 11: The Human Adventure/ Heroic Journey.
Biography
Marlin Brenner, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. With over five decades of helping patients alleviate suffering, he arrived at a new approach, Reflective Psychotherapy, that reveals how one can find their own "therapist within".
"As a NY psychoanalytic psychotherapist and sexual therapist, I often look for innovative, effective, and practical approaches to treatment. Dr. Brenner's new approach, Reflective Therapy, is not only relevant for clinicians, it is essential for all those that seek self-empowerment and psychological freedom."
Valerie Pinhas, PhD, Licensed NY Psychoanalyst and Certified Sexual Therapist /Supervisor
"Dr. Brenner’s book gracefully weaves experiences from a lifetime of clinical practice with tales from his own process of therapeutic self-analysis. The result is an invitation to self-exploration for anyone curious to find out more about their own ‘personal truth.’ Fortunately for the reader, this will not be a journey one has to embark on alone: Dr. Brenner provides several guiding concepts, examples and techniques perfected over his fifty years of practice to help one remain honest, forgiving and, at the same time, creative about the process of self-discovery."
Florian A. Cuc, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology and School Psychology at Nova Southeastern University.
"With over 50 years as a clinical psychologist, Marlin Brenner challenges us to enter uncharted psychological territory within our own minds. Offering a unique framework for understanding human development, he describes the "heroic journey," first with a therapist, and then on our own, in which we cultivate the voice for more full, mature, and graceful lives. Through the use of self-reflective techniques from interpreting dreams to journal-writing (with special emphasis on the written word)-- he explains how social and pathological structures shape our lives, and how nurturing creative connections with others and with ourselves reveals deeper truths and diminishes suffering. That effort is critical in these divided times, and this deeply compassionate book could not be more welcome."
Deborah Chasman, Co-Editor-in-Chief: Boston Review
