Focused Psychotherapy offers practitioners an approach to psychotherapeutic treatment that is financially viable and has sufficient clinical depth to assure genuine psychological growth.

This highly practical model of "brief, intermittent therapy throughout the life cycle," a method that originated at the Kaiser Permanente HMO in Northern California under the direction of senior author Nick Cummings, is based on the developmental model of Erik Erikson, the Strategic Therapy of Milton Erickson, and 30 years of empirical outcomes research in which helping the patient in the most effective and efficient ways were the primary criteria.

The book describes a general theoretical and practical approach to focused psychotherapy, including the metapsychological assumptions of this type of therapy, techniques to utilize resistance in the service of healing and growth, and a way of structuring treatment episodes. The volume goes on to present, with numerous clinical case examples, the application of this approach to various diagnostic categories.

Various chapters examine diagnostic schema that differentiates between patients who suffer, and those who cause others to suffer, as well as between patients who can be helped through insight and those who cannot. These diagnostic criteria are consistent with the categories of DSM-IV, but are grouped according to psychodynamics and treatment implications rather than according to symptomatology.