[.ca] Recreating Partnership (ISBN 0393703495)

This Book is Smart and has Heart....:
Ziegler and Hiller are obviously gifted therapists. I have been doing therapy for over 20 years and recognize master clinicians when I see them. The authors are smart enough to cut to the heart of matter with their patients and yet seem to have a deep capacity for empathy and compassion. They write in an accessible style and their clinical vignettes are very compelling, not like other therapy books in which the vignettes sound phony and self-serving. It's been a long time since I read a book in my field that genuinely inspired me and this one qualifies. One even finds oneself envying their patients!!

Optimism toward partnership:
If you've been looking for an optimistic, competency-based and solution-oriented approach for helping people with relationships, you'll be delighted and rewarded by this book. The authors use a construct of bad story/ good story to blend and organize techniques and metaphors from solution-focused and narrative therapies as well as other current authors and research. The result is a progression of chapters developing techniques or questions for different stages or situations. I especially loved the case examples. The last one, in particular, reminded me of how touching and rewarding our work can be.

Fantastic Book:
Came across this book quite by accident--what a lucky break. Not only does it offer one of the clearest and most useful blendings of narrative therapy and solution-focused therapy I've read to date, it really explains in practical terms how to work with couples in a strength-based, collaborative way. The case examples and transcriptions include clear explanations of the authors' thinking and show how they use the various techniques of their approach. (They even have examples of mistakes they made and how they handled them.) Before I even finished reading the book, I was doing better work with couples. My clients are the real beneficiaries of my fortunate discovery.