The centrality of emotion in unifying and accelerating psychotherapy

An array of treatment modalities, formats, and methods show promise in increasing the affective experience of the patient and thus potentially accelerating the course of psychotherapy through a coherent framework. A unified framework allows clinicians to select from various formats and methods and to use relational factors to maximize treatment potency. The treatment of a patient who had personality disturbance, chronic depression, obsessive‐compulsive disorder, and road rage illustrates several unifying principles and demonstrates that emotional experiences and their processing often lead to beneficial outcomes. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol: In Session 62: 585–596, 2006.