PTG in Clinical Practice

A Clinical Approach to Post-traumatic Growth

Richard Tedeschi, Ph.D.
Lawrence G. Calhoun Ph.D.
July 30, 2004
Wiley Publishing

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of posttraumatic growth and highlights the role of the therapy relationship in promoting growth and enhancing personal strength.

Although we are encouraging what may seem to be a rather passive clinical stance, the way the clinician listens and what the clinician listens to and attends to can have significant therapeutic consequences.
Dr. Tedeschi and Dr. Calhoun

In this chapter, we briefly review the literature that shows that growth occurs in the aftermath of a variety of life crises and summarize ways of understanding how this growth occurs. We then explore how the therapy relationship can be a vehicle to promoting growth and noticing and enhancing personal strength at a time of vulnerability.

We encourage therapists to use an existential-narrative-cognitive framework for approaching growth in clients. Working with survivors of traumatic events from the growth perspective we outline is highly rewarding for clinicians. In listening to clients with respect for their strength and ability to change, we find ourselves changed for the better. The model we outline allows us to share both the suffering and the possibilities with those who are being tempered by the fire.

Read the Chapter ” A Clinical Approach to Posttraumatic Growth”https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470939338.ch25

About the Authors

Richard Tedeschi, Ph.D.
Lawrence G. Calhoun Ph.D.

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