The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method

Name: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method
Price: 109.99 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 978-1-4338-3824-8

With Hadas Wiseman, PhD, and Orya Tishby, PsyD

ISBN: 978-1-4338-3824-8

June 2021

Item # 4310030

DVD [Closed Captioned]

$109.99

for member price

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Available formats

DVD [Closed Captioned]

Streaming options

Alexander Street Press

Part of the Teletherapy Video Series

Available as part of the APA PsycTherapy database, through your or your institution’s subscription. Questions? Contact Psycdatabases@apa.org.

Description

In this video program, Orya Tishby, PsyD, and Hadas Wiseman, PhD, demonstrate the application of the core conflictual relationship theme method (CCRT). The CCRT method serves to identify the internal representations of clients' relationships with early caregivers and guides the therapy in the process of exploring the client’s subjective experiences in current relationships, including the relationship with the therapist.

A dynamic CCRT focus of therapy is formulated and used within supportive–expressive therapy to help the client gain awareness of recurring relationship dynamics, or the client’s core conflict. The CCRT model is both a clinical formulation firmly rooted in clinical experience and close observation, as well as a theory-driven method rooted in Freudian psychodynamic theory.

During the demonstration session, Drs. Orya Tishby and Hadas Wiseman examine and review the CCRT method from a structured interview—the relationship anecdotes paradigm, or RAP interview, and discuss various interventions demonstrated with a young woman who is coming into therapy to work on interpersonal relationship issues in her life.

This session features a client portrayed by an actor on the basis of a composite of different cases.

Approach

The core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT) is a focused approach to brief psychodynamic psychotherapy that was first developed by Lester Luborsky, who originated the CCRT method both as a clinical formulation firmly rooted in clinical experience and close observation, and as a theory-driven method rooted in Freudian psychodynamic theory (Luborsky and Crits-Christoph, 1998).

The core conflictual relationship theme is the recurrent conflictual interpersonal pattern that clients experience in their daily life. The CCRT is an internal representation of clients' relationships with parental figures that plays out in their subjective experiences in current relationships. The CCRT formulation serves as the dynamic focus of therapy, so that clients can become aware of how it is recreated in current relationships and with the therapist.

The CCRT is derived from a structured interview: The Relationship Anecdotes Paradigm (RAP) interview. The interview was developed by Luborsky (1998) as a means to elicit relationship narratives in an outside-of-therapy interview.

In this interview, clients are asked to tell 7–10 short narratives about their relationship with significant others (parents, spouse, friends). These narratives are then coded on the three CCRT components: (i) Wishes, needs, or intentions (W); (ii) experienced or anticipated Responses of Others (RO); and (iii) actual or anticipated Responses of Self (RS) in the form of thought, emotion, behavior, or symptom. The components that are repeated most frequently in the interview form the final CCRT, which is then presented to the client.

Therapy consists of 16 sessions, divided into three phases: Sessions 1–4 focus on the ubiquity of the CCRT in everyday life; Sessions 5–12 constitute the main part of therapy: working through the Response of the Other—identifying its roots in the past, and observing the RO in the therapeutic relationship. The final phase, sessions 13–16 is the termination phase.

Contributor bios

Orya Tishby, PsyD, is associate professor in clinical psychology and clinical social work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She received her master’s degree from Hebrew University and a doctorate from Rutgers, where she received the 1991 Best Dissertation Award from the New Jersey Psychological Association.

She is an associate professor of practice in clinical psychology, and former head of the graduate program in clinical psychology. She was director of the Hebrew University Psychological Services and was in charge of the practicum and internship programs.

Professor Tishby is the director of the Freud Center for Research in Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University. She currently serves as president of the Israel Group of Society for Psychotherapy Research.

Dr. Tishby practices and supervises long- and short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, and her research focuses on the therapeutic relationship and countertransference. Dr. Tishby is coeditor (with Hadas Wiseman) of The Therapeutic Relationship: Innovative Investigations and of Developing the Therapeutic Relationship: Integrating Case studies, Research, and Practice.

Hadas Wiseman, PhD, is Professor, Counseling and Human Development, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. She completed her doctorate in clinical psychology at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She received clinical training at the Clark Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, and at the Psychological Services at Hebrew University, where she also completed her post doctorate.

She is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. Dr. Wiseman is also on faculty in the Weiss–Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies, University of Haifa.

Dr. Wiseman is a certified clinical psychologist in private practice in Kiryat Tivon, Israel. Her scholarly research has focused on psychotherapy process, the therapeutic relationship, attachment and relationship patterns and narratives in psychotherapy, personal and professional development of psychotherapists, and intergenerational trauma and interpersonal relationships in families of Holocaust survivors. She served as president of the International Society for Psychotherapy Research.

Dr. Wiseman coauthored (with Jacques P. Barber) Echoes of the Trauma: Relational Themes and Emotions in Children of Holocaust Survivors. She and coedited (with Orya Tishby) The Therapeutic Relationship: Innovative Investigations and of Developing the Therapeutic Relationship: Integrating Case studies, Research, and Practice.

Suggested resources

Luborsky, L. & Crits-Christoph, P. (1998). Understanding transference: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method (2nd ed., pp. 109–120). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Book, H. (1998). How to practice brief psychodynamic psychotherapy: The Core Conflictual Theme Method. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Tishby, O. & Wiseman, H. (2014). Types of countertransference dynamics: An exploration of their impact on the client-therapist relationship. Psychotherapy Research, 24(3), 360-375.

Wiseman, H. & Tishby, O. (2017). Applying relationship anecdotes paradigm interviews to study client-therapist relationship narratives: Core conflictual relationship theme analyses. Psychotherapy Research, 27(3), 283-299.

Wiseman, H. & Atzil-Slonim, D. (2018). Closeness and distance dynamics the therapeutic relationship. In O. Tishby, & H. Wiseman, (Eds.), Developing the therapeutic relationship: Integrating case studies, research and practice (pp. 81-103). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Schattner, E. & Tishby, O. (2018). The implicit negotiation of patient and therapist relational patterns. In O. Tishby & H. Wiseman, (Eds.), Developing the therapeutic relationship: Integrating case studies, research, and practice (pp. 61-80). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.