Psychotherapy Case Formulation

The volume is an indispensable aid for novice therapists seeking to develop this core competency.

Formulating cases is an essential component of psychotherapy training and practice. Yet beginning therapists often struggle to organize their ideas about the client and apply theory to the case.

This concise and engaging book is based on the author's extensive experience teaching case formulation to graduate students. It describes a highly-adaptable and evidence-based framework for conceptualizing clients and planning treatment. Applicable to both simple and complex cases, the model can be used regardless of one's theoretical orientation.

Readers are introduced to basic concepts that include the benefits of case formulation, sound decision-making, and the importance of cultural considerations, and then are led step-by-step through the action-oriented components of the model.

Tracy D. Eells, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and vice provost for faculty affairs at the University of Louisville. He maintains an individual psychotherapy practice, working with adults presenting with a wide variety of relationship, mood, anxiety and life problems. He regularly supervises clinical psychology graduate students and psychiatry residents. Psychological assessment is also a major part of his practice.

He has taught and conducted research on psychotherapy case formulation for more than 20 years and more recently has researched the role of computer assisted cognitive behavior therapy for treatment of depression. He is a fellow of APA Division 29 (Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy).

Dr. Eells obtained his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel in 1989 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Program on Conscious and Unconscious Mental Processes of the University of California, San Francisco.

In addition to many journal articles and book chapters he is editor of the Handbook of Psychotherapy Case Formulation, now in its second edition.