Len Sperry - The 15 Minute Case Conceptualization: Mastering the Pattern-Focused Approach

This is it! This is the book for planning and implementing highly effective therapy. Use the five-steps strategy for a 15-minute case conceptualization that will guide your clients movement toward wellness. For a few minutes more, the eight step strategy will make the difference for those with more severe and debilitating conditions. Every practicum and internship student absolutely needs this book. And, if you missed case conceptualization in your training, this pattern-focused approach will make all the difference in how you practice after graduation.

James Robert Bitter, EdD
East Tennessee State University

Ive needed this book for 30 years!... Reading (it) has already helped me become better at teaching case conceptualization.

John Sommers-Flanagan, PhD
from the Foreword

The 15 Minute Case Conceptualization: Mastering the Pattern-Focused Approach by Len and Jon Sperry is a must read for any mental health professional. Their practical five-step procedure for tracking clients nine behavioral markers, all illustrated with numerous case studies, makes mastery of case conceptualization easy. This unique, research-based approach is the most comprehensive approach to case conceptualization available and should be required reading in any academic mental health program.

Brian A. Gerrard, PhD
Western Institute for Social Research and
University of San Francisco

Len Sperry, MD, PhD, is a pioneer and one of the top experts in behavioral health case conceptualization in the world. Reading this book will be like having Len mentor and personally teach you his artful approach to recognizing personality-based patterns and case conceptualization and will improve your clinical assessment and practice. Len and his son Jon team up to offer this refined yet inclusive approach that helps you understand your patient from multiple perspectives and puts you in a position to better help your patient. I benefitted from Lens expertise in the classroom when he was first developing and teaching his case conceptualization approach, and it has had an incredible impact on my career and has helped me with everyone I have ever worked with. More importantly, my patients have all benefitted from it. I strongly recommend this must-read text and reference to all behavioral health professionals.

Jon A. Lehrmann, MD
Charles E. Kubly Professor and Chair of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine
Medical College of Wisconsin

Sperry and Sperry are pioneers in advocating for psychotherapy case conceptualization and providing practical tools for incorporating this critical skill into clinical practice. Their latest contribution sweeps away myths that case conceptualization is too cumbersome, time-consuming, or difficult. Learning their parsimonious 15-minute case conceptualization approach for more straightforward clients and their full-scale model for more complex clients would benefit any therapist. In short, this important book can help therapists achieve better outcomes.

Tracy D. Eells, PhD
University of Louisville

In The 15 Minute Case Conceptualization, Drs. Sperry offer a remarkably timely, practical, easy to understand and implement case conceptualization approach for clinical and counseling students and professionals. Today, clinicians must provide evidence-based, practical, and accurate case conceptualizations and this book will certainly help them to do so. It highlights nine clear and easy to remember behavioral markers that anchor the process of case conceptualization. This book should be in the hands of every clinical student and practitioner, and surely it will be the go-to resource for case conceptualization.

Thomas G. Plante, PhD, ABPP
Santa Clara University and Stanford
University School of Medicine

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sperry, Len, author. | Sperry, Jon, author.

Title: The 15 minute case conceptualization : mastering the pattern-focused

approach / Len Sperry, M.D. Ph.D. & Jon Sperry, Ph.D.

Other titles: Fifteen minute case conceptualization

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2021. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021024152 (print) | LCCN 2021024153 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197517987 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197518007 (epub) |

ISBN 9780197608715 (online)

Subjects: LCSH: Psychotherapy. | PsychotherapyMethodology.

Classification: LCC RC480.5 .S6417 2021 (print) | LCC RC480.5 (ebook) |

DDC 616.89/14dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024152

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024153

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197517987.001.0001

John Sommers-Flanagan

Ive needed this book for 30 years!

Just last month (before reading this book), I was standing in front of a Zoom camera, trying to teach the basics of case conceptualization to a group of 23 masters and doctoral students. All of my fine-grained case conceptualization wisdom was being channeled into a single visual and verbal performance. My left hand, I said, is the clients problem. Pausing briefly for dramatic effect, I then continued, and my right hand is the clients goal.

My newfound nonverbal gestures are mostly a function of seeing myself on the screen, and therefore wanting to avoid seeing myself (and being seen by the class) as boring. To add spice to my case conceptualization gesturing. Case conceptualization is simple, I said. All it is, is the path we take to help clients move from their problem state... toward their goal state (I finished with a flourish, by wiggling the fingers on my raised right hand).

But boiled down truths are always partly lies. Despite my fabulous mix of the verbal and nonverbal, I was lying to my students. At the time, I had thought of it as a little white lie, all for the higher purpose of simplification. And although I still like what I said and still believe in the rough truth of my visual case conceptualization description, after reading Len and Jon Sperrys illuminating work on case conceptualization, I better understand what I should have said.

Case conceptualization is not simple. As Sperry and Sperry describe in this book, case conceptualizationeven when summarized wellincludes multiple dimensions of human behavior along with clinician perception, judgment, and decision-making. I needed much more than a few wiggly fingers to communicate the detailed nuances of case conceptualization.