Supportive psychotherapy is widely practiced but poorly defined, often misunderstood, and unfairly disparaged. Dr. Markowitz and his colleagues manualized Brief Supportive Psychotherapy (BSP) as a time-limited control treatment to compare to "more active" established psychotherapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) in research studies. In fact, BSP, an emotion-focused, bare-bones treatment based on Carl Rogers'' Client Centered Therapy, has since proven itself to be a robust treatment in multiple randomized controlled treatment trials. It has generally kept pace with the brand name treatments in treating patients with difficult disorders like chronic depression. Some therapists, previously trained only in cognitive and behavioral approaches, have found this affect-focused approach adds a new dimension to their thinking and to patients'' lives.Brief Supportive Psychotherapy: A Treatment Manual and Clinical Approach is both an elaboration of t
