Their Finest Hour: Master Therapists Share Their Greatest Success Stories » (Reissue)

Jeffery Kottler is Professor and Chair of the Counseling Department at California State University, Fullerton, and has written more than fifty books in psychology, counseling, and related fields. He has authored a dozen texts for counselors and therapists and another dozen on the nature of change. His book The Last Victim: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, is a New York Times best seller.

Jon Carlson is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Counseling at Governors State University, University Park, and a psychologist at the Wellness Clinic in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He has authored more than thirty books and 120 articles, as well as produced more than 100 videos featuring the world's best therapists in action. He currently edits the award-winning The Family Journal.

“A wonderful book!! I am fascinated to read the conventional and unconventional methods of successful therapists who use their intuition, creativity and humanity rather than just their training to facilitate healing in challenging clients. All therapists, beginning and experienced will be inspired and informed by this book.”
Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.
Author of Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

“What an incredibly varied compilation of amazing therapists who, through sharing of their insights, strategies, intuitions and theories, offer both rookie and experienced therapists alike, golden nuggets that inspire and instruct! The richness of the stories of clients' lives are woven into tapestries that read like a novel. I love this book!”
Michele Weiner-Davis, M.S.W.
Author of The Sex-Starved Marriage

From behind closed doors, leading therapists share their single-most challenging and ultimately triumphant cases, and recount how these experiences affected their view of therapy and their roles as helpers and healers.

In Their Finest Hour: Master Therapists Share Their Greatest Success Stories, two dozen of the field's best and brightest, on the cutting edge of their profession, relate their most professionally rewarding cases and what they learned from them. Readers will be fascinated as therapists talk about what defines achievement in their field, and how therapy really works. They speak frankly about how their seminal cases shaped their ideas. Told in a narrative style, each story ends with a unique lesson to be learned. The book is practical and accessible for practitioners in the field and those simply interested in the dynamic approaches taken by today's leading therapists.

Jeffrey Kottler is Professor and Chair of the Counseling Department at California State University, Fullerton, and has written more than 50 books in psychology, counseling, and related fields. He has authored a dozen texts for counselors and therapists and another dozen on the nature of change. His book, The Last Victim: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, is a New York Times best seller.

Jon Carlson is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Counseling at Governors State University, University Park, and a psychologist at the Wellness Clinic in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He has authored more than 30 books and 120 articles, and produced more than 100 videos featuring the world's best therapists in action. He currently edits the award-winning The Family Journal.

Chapter 1 The Finest Hours 1

Chapter 2 The Ball, the Snowflakes, and the Wheelchair: Cases from Jeffrey Kottler 5

Chapter 3 My Mama's Dead and My Daddy's in Jail: A Case from Jon Carlson 27

Chapter 4 Limits of the Past: A Case from Michael Yapko 45

Chapter 5 Slaying a Dragon: A Case from Susan M. Johnson 57

Chapter 6 The Control Freak with the Gun Collection: A Case from William Glasser 71

Chapter 7 An Immovable Object: A Case from Pat Love 85

Chapter 8 Extreme Therapy: A Case from Nick Cummings 99

Chapter 9 Put Caring at the Top of the List: A Case from Michael Mahoney 113

Chapter 10 I Accept Myself, and Others: Therefore I Am: A Case from Albert Ellis 121

Chapter 11 Recovery from Therapy Abuse: A Case from Laura Brown 135

Chapter 12 Brought Back from the Dead: A Case from Arnold Lazarus 149

Chapter 13 The Queen of Shock: A Case from Bradford Keeney 161

Chapter 14 A Family Epiphany: A Case from Peggy Papp 179

Chapter 15 "We Have to Seduce People into Trusting Us before We Can Spank Them": Cases from Frank Pittman 193

Chapter 16 Both Sides of the Story: A Case from Stephen Lankton 209

Chapter 17 The Gardener Who Dug Very Deep: A Case from Alvin Mahrer 219

Chapter 18 Solving Unsolvable Problems: Cases from Richard B. Stuart 229

Chapter 19 Treating the Trauma of Alien Abduction: A Case from John Krumboltz 241

Chapter 20 Killing Herself Slowly: A Case from William Doherty 249

Chapter 21 Thinking Out Loud: A Case from Gordon Wheeler 263

Chapter 22 Finding Love in the Right Direction: A Case from John Gray 273

Chapter 23 When the Therapist and Client Influence OneAnother: A Case from Judith V. Jordan 285

Chapter 24 Continuing a Relationship with a Dead Father: A Case from Robert A. Neimeyer 299

Chapter 25 A Demolition Project: A Case from David Scharff 311

Chapter 26 To Dare to Tell the Truth: A Case from Terrence Real 321

Chapter 27 Letters of Faith: A Case from Stephen Madigan 335

Chapter 28 You Can't Kill Yourself Until You Pay Your Debt: A Case from Scott Miller 345

Chapter 29 Learning from Their Finest Hours: A Narrative Analysis of Core Themes With Myf Maple 357

References 377