Strengths and Flourishing in Psychotherapy

Strengths and Flourishing in Psychotherapy highlights how therapists can engage character strengths and virtues in psychotherapy regardless of their specific approach to therapy. Character strengths are qualities of personhood that tend to contribute to flourishing over time, such as gratitude, compassion, agency, forgiveness, humility, and many others. Traditionally, psychotherapy focuses on the alleviation of symptoms of distress which represents an important commitment to reducing client suffering. Yet emerging dual factor approaches to mental health involve attending to both suffering and flourishing to help clients cultivate meaningful and connected lives.

This video offers differing ways therapists can weave engagement of strengths and flourishing into a variety of well-established, evidence-based therapeutic approaches. The psychotherapy approaches demonstrated in this video include feminist-multicultural humanistic, contemporary relational psychodynamic, strengths-centered therapy using gratitude interventions, and the unified protocol cognitive-behavioral therapy. The demonstrations are followed by a group discussion with the host, Steve J. Sandage and the guest experts, Sarah Crabtree, Todd Farchione, Heidi Levitt, and Joel Wong.

This video offers differing ways therapists can weave engagement of strengths and flourishing into a variety of well-established, evidence-based therapeutic approaches. The psychotherapy approaches demonstrated in this video include feminist-multicultural humanistic, contemporary relational psychodynamic, strengths-centered therapy using gratitude interventions, and the unified protocol cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Heidi M. Levitt, PhD (she/her), is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology program at The University of Massachusetts Boston. She will demonstrate a Humanistic psychotherapy approach.

Sarah Crabtree, PhD is Assistant Research Director and a Couple and Family Therapist at the Danielsen Institute at Boston University. She will demonstrate a Contemporary Relational Psychodynamic approach.

Todd Farchione, PhD is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University (BU) where he codeveloped the Unified Protocol (a transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral therapy approach).

Dr. Joel Wong, PhD is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at Indiana University. Dr. Wong takes a strengths-centered and narrative therapy approach and will demonstrate gratitude practices that can be used with various approaches.

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Other Suggested Titles

Porter, E., Jessen, M., Coleman, J., Sinha, S., Devor, N.G., Sauer-Zavala, S., Levitt, H., Tao, K., Zanarini, M., Farchione, T., Sandage, S.J., & Owen, J. (2023). Therapist experiences and perspectives on moving beyond symptoms and into flourishing: A grounded theory analysis. Counselling Psychology Quarterly. DOI: 10.1080/09515070.2023.2225033

Goodman, D.M., Sandage, S.J., Rupert, D., Manalili, M.M.C., Owen, J., Farchione, T., & Zanarini, M.C. (2022). The virtue of virtue for psychotherapy: Contextualizing and situating the conversation. In B. Slife, S. Yanchar, & F. Richardson (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of theoretical and philosophical psychology: Critiques, problems, and alternatives to psychological ideas (pp. 497-515). Abingdon, UK: Routledge Press.

Jankowski, P.J., Sandage, S.J., Captari, L.E., Crabtree, S.A., Choe, E.J.Y., & Gerstenblith, J. (2024). A practice-based study of relational virtues and alliance correspondence in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 80, 1323-1344. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.23669

Worthington, E.L., Jr., & Sandage, S.J. (2016). Forgiveness and spirituality in psychotherapy: A relational approach. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association