Bergin and Garfield, Libraries and Due Dates

Hmm, again, a lot of time has passed since my last post. 20-ish days? that's almost three weeks! Kind of crazy to think it's been so long. It feels like a flash.

I've been working with intense focus for the last few days trying to read and take notes on the interlibrary loan book that was due back yesterday. Bergin and Garfield's handbook of behavior change and psychotherapy, or something close to that. It was a really fascinating book, for me. Basically, a bunch of experts in the field wrote chapters summarizing the current research in their respective areas of expertise. They all had a researcher bent, but many also had a practitioner lense, and so the chapters contained nuanced summaries of the best research in the field on various topics, among which I was particularly interested in the chapters talking about the characteristics and skills of the most effective therapists, elements and approaches that have the most robust research, which approaches work best for which issues, suggestions for psychotherapist training, and a nuanced explanation of the research and how to read and understand the research.

If you are just reading the popular articles or youtube videos talking about 'how to be a good therapist' you are not getting the whole picture. I think that's true for quite a lot things. Nutrition, healthcare, goal-setting, etc. There is a difference between catchy phrases that people use to try and sell you on their product or program, and the research itself, which often doesn't lead you to the same conclusions the people who are trying to sell you stuff are reaching, if you actually read the source material.

Research has significant limits on what practical information it can actually give you, and good scientists make that clear. Salesmen typically don't. All that just to say, it was a great read but I definitely ran out of time, and by the end was just quickly taking pictures of chapter summaries to read later. Thankfully I planned for that eventuality and prioritized the chapters that were more important for first. That being the case I'm grateful for the artificial time deadline of the return date, and it kept me focused. I'm looking forward to going over my notes and summarizing them further to help cement the most useful information into my brain and make it easier to recall later, and stop worrying about the research question of "what can I do to make myself a good therapist" because I have as much information on that as I can reasonably get via research, at the moment. Now it's time to put it into practice.

I've got a little more I want to talk about, but this is already a long one, so I'll split it up into a second post.