Psychological Mindedness

Psychodynamically oriented clinicians have long emphasized the relevance of "psychological mindedness" to effective therapy. But what does the term mean? That has long been a difficult question to answer. There have been a variety of definitions and measures not only of psychological mindedness but of related constructs such as alexithymia, private self-consiousness, self-focused attention, social perspective taking, and personal intelligence. Over the past decade, McCallum and Piper have developed their own definition and measure of psychological mindedness, and have examined the extent to which it predicts patient response to psychodynamic psychotherapy. This book is both a collection of their efforts and that of their fellow researchers in this broad field. It attempts to increase mental health practitioners' understanding of psychological mindedness and its importance to patient assessment and treatment. It also provides methods for assessing psychological mindedness and addresses its relevance to interpersonal contexts outside of the mental health field. This book should facilitate clinicans' methods of selecting the most appropriate patients for their particular approaches to therapy. Accordingly, their client dropout rates should be reduced and the process and outcome of therapy should be maximized.