Personality-Guided Therapy
by Theodore Millon (with Seth Grossman, Sarah Meagher, Carrie
Millon, & George Everly)
Published by Wiley, 1999
ISBN: 0-471-52807-2
Excerpt from Foreword by Roger D. Davis
This book fills a gaping hole in clinical practice. In an age when the forces
of managed care have driven clinicians more and more to treat only the most
immediate and dramatic outcroppings of pathology, Millon maintains that
therapists should understand the presenting problem by understanding the whole
person. Personality-guided therapy thus addresses not only the most pressing
issues, but also treats the potential for pathology, the only foundation of an
ethical psychotherapy. No longer is the focus on superficial, manualized
psychotherapies which "bleed" patients of symptom severity while leaving the
underlying potential for disease--ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and
relating that we call personality--intact. By seeking to understand the whole
person, therapy is shifted back to the humanistic values that have formed the
core mission of our discipline throughout most of its history, a return to
long-term healthy functioning. While no one would dare disagree with such a
noble purpose, it is strange that contemporary times have found such a
discrepancy between practicing and preaching.
......But no more. With this book, the logic which connects constructs to
persons has been specified in detail. The psychotherapy advocated is genuinely
integrative, but in a sense which differs from the term as it is now casually
thrown around. For Millon, integration refers to an understanding that issues
from an explicit theory of personality, the Evolutionary Model (Millon, 1990).
The goal is to put forward a taxonomy of personality constructs that resembles
the periodic table of chemistry, or the standard model of physics. While the
value of such a system would seem self-evident, it has been overlooked by
so-called integrationists. Yet, if it is essential to understand persons through
constructs, as it always is in therapy, then we must first determine what
constructs are essential to such an understanding. The theory is the
Evolutionary Model, the constructs it generates are personality styles and
disorders of Axis II, and the goal is understanding the patient's personality
and how he or she thereby interacts with the surrounding world to create
difficulties that result in anxiety, depression, and other disorders of Axis I.
As Millon shows, only then can techniques be chosen scientifically, that is,
logically integrated in accordance with the person's problems and needs.....
Reviews of Personality-Guided Therapy (from the back cover)
"...a 'must read' for students as well as mental health
professionals."--Aaron T. Beck, MD University of Pennsylvania
"...Brilliant in concept and amazing in scope."--John Norcross, PhD President
APA Division 29
"...an important new dimension to the psychological intervention
literature."--Irving Weiner, PhD Editor in Chief, Wiley
"...provides...[what]...clinicians need, our training program should utilize,
and our field is striving for."--John F. Clarkin, PhD--Cornell Medical Center
"...seasoned mental health professionals will undoubtably return again and
again to this volume... [It] is sure to prove a classic in the field."--Jeffrey
J. Magnavita, PhD Connecticut Center
Table of Contents
Part I: FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1. A Brief Review of Modern Treatment Modalities
Chapter 2. A Perspective on Contemporary Trends
Chapter 3. Personality-Guided Synergism
Chapter 4. Planning Personality-Guided Treatment
Part II: CLINICAL SYNDROMES-AXIS I
Chapter 5. Treating Acute, Post-Traumatic, and Generalized
Anxiety Disorders
Chapter 6. Treating Anxiety-related Psychological Syndromes:
Phobic, Dissociative, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
Chapter 7. Treating Anxiety-related Physical
Syndromes:Somatoform and Conversion Disorders
Chapter 8. Treating Mood-Related Syndromes: Dysthymia, Major
Depression,and Bipolar Disorders
Chapter 9. Treating Cognitive Dysfunction Syndromes:
Substance-Related and Schizophrenic Disorders
Part III: PERSONALITY DISORDERS-AXIS II
Chapter 10. Treating Schizoid Personality Patterns
Chapter 11. Treating Avoidant Personality Patterns
Chapter 12. Treating Depressive Personality Patterns
Chapter 13. Treating Dependent Personality Patterns
Chapter 14. Treating Histrionic Personality Patterns
Chapter 15. Treating Narcissistic Personality Patterns
Chapter 16. Treating Antisocial Personality Patterns
Chapter 17. Treating Sadistic Personality Patterns
Chapter 18. Treating Compulsive Personality Patterns
Chapter 19. Treating Negativistic Personality Patterns
Chapter 20. Treating Masochistic Personality Patterns
Chapter 21. Treating Schizotypal Personality Patterns
Chapter 22. Treating Borderline Personality Patterns
Chapter 23. Treating Paranoid Personality Patterns
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