Clinical Case Formulations
Matching the Integrative Treatment Plan to the Client
Chapter One
AFRAMEWORK FOR
CASE FORMULATIONS
As a beginning therapist, facing your first clients, you probably ask yourself:
How am I going to know what to do? When your training begins, you may wonder:
What should I do with this specific client? With more experience, you will
grasp a more important need: When I face any new client, how do I create a treatment
plan that is the best match for that client? Even experienced therapists face
this challenge. Thus, you need skills to create case formulations-the focus of
this book.
Jerome Frank (Frank & Frank, 1991) defined two components of a case formulation:
(1) A plausible explanation for the patient's symptoms, in the form of
a conceptual scheme or even a myth, which provides a rationale for (2) the prescription
of a ritual or other type of procedure for resolving them. Based on this
definition, a case formulation includes the following elements:
Symptoms or problems that need to ... read full excerpt from Clinical Case Formulations: Matching the Integrative Treatment Plan to the Client ebook
