Creative Therapeutic Technique: Skills for the Art of Bringing Forth Change

Performance. This is where it starts. The Keeneys' heretical perspective holds that professionals can fill up on theory - indeed, on many theories - at the expense of developing the performance skills that are the foundation of effective therapy. They argue that creative performance technique, rather than theory, is primary. Thus this new book is appropriate for any practitioner no matter what school of therapy they belong to.

The authors begin by envisioning every session as a three-act structure with a beginning, middle and end. This helps therapists maintain a focus on movement and change, like a compass that allows practitioners to keep track of the plot line and direction of every session. Exercises help readers make these ideas their own.

In Chapter Two, “Short-Circuiting Vicious Circles,” the focus is on creative ways to interrupt the pathological discourse that maintains impoverished experience in clients’ lives, while “Feeding Virtuous Circles” considers the creation of more generative, resource-rich experiences. This section ends with “Designing Prescriptive Action for Change,” thus rounding out the discussion of the basic tools necessary to implement a well-formed therapeutic performance.

The midsection of the book presents opportunities to initiate and maintain consistent presence inside creative, transformative interactions in every session. “Always Utilize and Improvise” leads the way by describing, and inviting the reader to practice, ways to create openings for new movement. “Absurdity Lubricates the Wheels of Change” introduces exercises to help awaken difference and inspiration. “The Changing Therapist” encourages the therapist to include and expand his or her role as an instrument of change.

In the case studies in Chapters Eight, Nine, and Ten, the authors demonstrate ways in which they have helped practitioners to uncover their own unique resources and to develop mastery of creative and effective expression. The final chapter, “Bringing Life to Clinical Training,” gathers together thoughts on the importance of performance-based skills and one’s own wisdom-based learning as the linchpins of an alive therapeutic environment.

Hillary Keeney and Brad Keeney bring to their work a rare combination of intellectual depth and jump-off-the-page enthusiasm. Creative Therapeutic Technique is a practical guide that knocks the familiar staid therapeutic stance on its ear, suggesting instead an approach that allows therapists to always be ready and able to meet clients where they are - and then uncover fresh and vital ways to get them where they long to be.