The Wisdom of Psychotherapy

Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion: The Wisdom of Psychotherapy offers a compilation of mature therapeutic insights that are valuable in achieving a better way of living. It describes a unique experiment in applied psychology whereby a group of individuals overcame a wide range of defensive behaviors and transformed their lives. The book documents the knowledge they acquired along the way and offers corrective suggestions that are based on their experiences. Most important, the authors indicate how the insights achieved can be applied by therapists in clinical practice. This book is a comprehensive guide for helping professionals and others people who are interested in personal development, deepening friendships, sustaining intimacy in couple relationships, achieving success in the workplace and developing healthy child-rearing practices. It points out the value of leading a life marked by adventure and recreation, transcendent goals, and spiritual exploration and offers fresh views on the past, present, and future of psychotherapy.

Educational Objectives

Upon completion of this course, the clinician will be able to:

• Develop a greater awareness of ones own defenses.
• Identify and develop the abilities to lower clients' defenses.
• Identify the skills necessary to discern if clients are accepting responsibility for their own personal growth.
• Assist clients in experiencing increased vulnerability and intimacy in their lives.
• Help clients become less self critical and develop healthier inner voices.

Syllabus / Course Instructions

• The Course consists of reading the selected book, successfully completing an online posttest and filling out a course evaluation.
• The book is not included. It must be purchased separately. We have supplied a link to Amazon.com for your convenience.
• Purchasing your course will give you access to both a printable copy of the test and an online version. Print the test to use as a companion as you read the book and answer the questions.
• You cannot exit the online test once you begin, so have your answers available.

Additional Resources On This Site for CE

• When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough
  by Harold Kushner: 6 CE Credits
• Living a Life That Matters
  by Harold Kushner: 7 CE Credits
• Authentic Happiness
  by Martin E. P. Seligman: 10 CE Credits
• Caring for Ourselves
  By Ellen K. Baker: 6 CE Credits

Additional Resources Not On This Site

• Fear of Intimacy, by Robert W. Firestone, PhD and Joyce Catlett, M.A.
• Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice: A Revolutionary Program to Counter Negative Thoughts and Live Free of Imagined Limitations Robert W. Firestone, PhD, Lisa Firestone, PhD, and Joyce Catlett,M.A.
• For more on the work of Robert W. Firestone, Lisa Firestone and Joyce Catlett visit the Glendon Association www.glendon.org

Bio: Robert W. Firestone, PhD, Lisa A. Firestone, PhD, Joyce Catlett, MA

Robert W. Firestone, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, author and researcher. He has focused extensively on the defenses constructed during childhood, which impair the ability of adults to sustain intimate relationships. He was engaged in private practice from the time he received his PhD in 1957 until 1979. Over this time he developed his initial concepts on schizophrenia and applying these to a theory of neurosis. His major publications include The Fantasy Bond, Compassionate Child-Rearing and Fear of Intimacy. He has developed a therapeutic methodology described in Voice Therapy, Suicide and the Inner Voice and Combating Destructive Thought Processes. He has been a consulting theorist with the Glendon Association since 1979.

Lisa A. Firestone, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and an adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara Graduate School of Education. She is involved in clinical training and research related to the assessment of suicide and violence potential. She has authored The Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST; coauthored with Robert W. Firestone), Voices in Suicide: The Relationship Between Self-Destructive Thoughts and Self-Destructive Lifestyles, The Treatment of Sylvia Plath, and Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice. She is the director of research and education at the Glendon Association in Santa Barbara, California. Dr. Firestone received her PhD from the California School of Professional Psychology in 1991.

Joyce Catlett, MA, author and lecturer has collaborated with Robert W. Firestone in writing 10 books and has co produced 37 educational videos for the Glendon Association. She developed the Compassionate Child-Rearing Parent Education Program, a child abuse prevention curriculum that is being used in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. She lectures and conducts continuing education workshops at universities and mental health facilities throughout the United States and Canada.