Chapter 13 Discussion of Jill Gardner's “Using Self Psychology in Brief Psychotherapy”

Dr. Gardner has eloquently presented an overview of brief psychotherapy utilizing a self psychological approach. She rightly emphasizes that this approach is not a technique but, rather, a mode of listening and understanding and suggests a series of components to enhance the effectiveness of what can be accomplished psychotherapeutically in a relatively brief and finite time period. In so doing, Dr. Gardner maintains the self psychological emphasis on the empathic mode of listening, in contrast to other psychodynamic approaches to brief psychotherapy, which tend to be technique-based (see, for example, Budman and Gurman, 1988; Piper et al., 1991; Davanloo, 1995). As in the case of the longer psychoanalytic psychotherapies, including psychoanalysis, Dr. Gardner's approach to psychoanalytic self psychology in a time-limited modality is rooted in a particular mode of listening, understanding, and communication of our understanding, which is ideally the antithesis of a technique-based brief psychotherapy.

Probably Dr. Gardner's most overarching contribution today is the idea that brief psychotherapy and a self psychological approach to treatment are highly compatible and, in fact, make possible a very productive brief treatment precisely because the use of the empathic mode enables the focus to be depth psychological, rather than superficial and behavioral. This is of the utmost importance because I believe that brief psychotherapy cannot be successful without a focus, and use of the empathic mode leads to a psychological focus rather