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219 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
With empathy, you accurately understand the world from the client's perspective; with validation you also actively communicate that the client's perspective makes sense.
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Dialectics is both a view about the nature of reality and a method of persuasion. In both, an essential idea is that any one position contains its antithesis or opposite position. Progress comes from the resolution of the two opposing positions into a synthesis. In other words, the way forward is to simultaneously accept the client and push for change.
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Taking a dialectical perspective means one understands that suicidal clients like Marie simultaneously want to live and want to die. Saying aloud to her therapist, "I want to die" rather than killing herself in secrecy contains within it the opposite position of "I want to live."
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Rather than become polarised, in a dialectical approach the therapist agrees that the client's life is unbearable and that the client needs a way out, and offers another route, using therapy to build a life that is genuinely worth living.