Chapter 14.The Structural Impasse
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Excerpt
A structural impasse is the point at which no further advance in a course of psychotherapy occurs, even though the participants continue to meet. The source of this failure is the treatment plan itself. This problem almost never occurs at the beginning of therapy. Instead, after a productive period in which the therapist may be enthusiastic about a new patient’s intriguing problems and the patient may be hopeful that therapy will provide relief and direction, progress slows or even suddenly stops. There seems to be no way to move forward again. Although enthusiasm and hope combined to fuel the early gains, the gap between the therapist’s agenda and the patient’s expectations widens. What happens then is that
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