Becoming Better Psychotherapists: Advancing Training and Supervision

This book examines the training and supervision of psychotherapists, with a focus on psychotherapy efficacy and key issues facing psychotherapy training programs today.

While some therapists are more effective than others, good training and supervision can provide all clinicians with the skills and tools to become effective practitioners. Considerable research has shown the broad efficacy of psychotherapy, but there are still many clients who do not fully benefit from therapy, some who don't benefit at all, and even some who get worse as a consequence of therapy. The overall goal of training and supervision, and efforts to study these practices, should be to enhance the current degree of effectiveness that has been reached in psychotherapy.

This book offers innovative knowledge on how to better understand and improve training by relying on the reflections, research discoveries, and collaborative work of psychotherapy scholars who represent a diversity of theoretical orientations, methodological expertise, and levels of experience.


About the Author

Louis Georges Castonguay, PhD, completed his doctorate in clinical psychology at Stony Brook University, a clinical internship at U.C. Berkeley, and a post-doctorate at Stanford University. He is currently liberal arts professor of psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on factors related to the process, outcome, and training of psychotherapy. In recent years he has conducted practice-oriented research aimed at better understanding and improving psychotherapy as practice in natural settings. He has more than 230 publications, including 12 co-edited books. Among these books is the 7th edition of the Bergin and Garfield's Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, which he co-edited with Michael Barkham and Wolfgang Lutz.

Clara E. Hill, PhD, earned her doctorate at Southern Illinois University in 1974. She started her career in 1974 as an assistant professor in the department of psychology, University of Maryland and is currently still there as a professor. She has been president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology, co-editor of Psychotherapy Research, and is currently the president of the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29). Her major research interests are therapist skills, psychotherapy process and outcome, training and supervising therapists, dream work, meaning in life, and qualitative research. She has published 270+ journal articles, 75+ chapters in books, and 16 books (including Helping Skills, Dream Work in Therapy, Essentials of Consensual Qualitative Research, and Meaning in Life).