How can a patient best be helped? What treatment is most effective for which problem? When is brief therapy sufficient? When is long-term work necessary? Dr. James Gustafson, who has spent over twenty-five years treating people using different modalities - brief, long-term, family, and group approaches - answers these questions in this unique contribution.

Brief Versus Long Psychotherapy first covers the common ground of all psychotherapies: interpersonal problems. Dr. Gustafson shows readers how to distinguish between what he terms benign problems, which improve through the therapist's stance of understanding, and malignant ones, which initially respond with the patient becoming increasingly agitated and demanding. Dr. Gustafson demonstrates how to understand the patient's dynamics and what criteria to use to decide on treatment modality.

Here, the author gives concrete examples of his use of field theory to understand and consider with the patient his or her difficulties in social, psychological, and biological contexts.

Rather than promising miracle cures in unrealistically few sessions, Dr. Gustafson accepts the tremendous challenge of improving people's lives. In this volume he helps therapists clearly assess the problems people bring to them in order to provide them with the best possible treatment - and therefore the most efficient one.