Therapeutic Metacommunication in a Nutshell

Reviews the book, Therapeutic Metacommunication: Therapist Impact Disclosure as Feedback in Psychotherapy by Donald J. Kiesler (see record 1988-97765-000). The present monograph is focused, almost exclusively, on intervention procedures whereby the therapist (B) discloses to the patient (A) his or her perceptions of and reactions to the patient's actions as experienced by the therapist in their specific relationship". Such interventions are among the most distinctive procedural features of Kiesler's approach to interpersonal psychotherapy, and, in his view, they have been almost universally overlooked in the individual psychotherapy literature. The monograph is meant to introduce clinicians to the theory and practice of metacommunicative feedback and to stimulate further research on its therapeutic effectiveness. The bulk of the monograph is devoted to a detailed explication of the principles of metacommunicative feedback. These principles are elaborated within the context of the maladaptive transaction cycle text and with reference to a process-stage model of the therapeutic relationship. In the early stage, the therapist is "hooked" by the patient's strong demands for complementary responses. The personal hooked stage eventually becomes unpleasant for both participants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)