Review of Therapeutic presence: A mindful approach to effective therapeutic relationships.

What is it about?

This article reviews the book Therapeutic Presence: A Mindful Approach to Effective Therapeutic Relationships by Shari Geller and Leslie Greenberg (see record 2022-97786-000). According to the reviewer, Therapeutic Presence is an excellent resource for clinicians aiming to practice psychotherapy from a humanistic perspective. Two prominent humanistic psychologists co-authored this book. It is accessible in a way that well-established professionals, early career, and graduate student therapists may benefit from reading. In addition to presenting an extensive overview of theory, the text offers extensive updates to research on therapeutic presence since the first edition. A model and scale are presented, and skills and exercises for cultivating therapeutic presence among individual therapists and graduate students in therapist training programs are also presented. This book fills the need for an extensive resource on an often-under-discussed topic that is pivotal to humanistic psychotherapists: what contributes to cultivating a strong therapeutic relationship with clients that enhances therapeutic effectiveness?

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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Therapeutic Presence is an excellent resource for clinicians aiming to practice from a humanistic perspective. Two prominent humanistic psychologists co-authored this book. It is accessible in a way that well-established professionals, early career, and graduate student therapists may benefit from reading. In addition to presenting an extensive overview of theory, the text offers extensive updates to research on therapeutic presence since the first edition (Geller & Greenberg, 2012). A model and scale are presented, and skills and exercises for cultivating therapeutic presence among individual therapists and graduate students in therapist training programs are also presented. This book fills the need for an extensive resource on an often-under-discussed topic that is pivotal to humanistic psychotherapists: what contributes to cultivating a strong therapeutic relationship with clients that enhances therapeutic effectiveness? The answer clearly articulated by the authors is therapeutic presence, and they show therapists how to nurture presence in a practical way in their own lives and with their clients, such that presence enhances therapeutic effectiveness.