This book responds to a long-standing need in the field of psychotherapy created by the gradual demise of the medical model. If we are not to define people by their deficits, how can we organize our understanding of them? The concept of competence provides the needed framework. Beginning with the idea that most symptoms represent adaptive attempts gone awry, a competence approach develops the healthy urges that reside within symptoms and help clients organize around those instead of around the problems themselves. Instead of eschewing psychopathology, it embraces it and tries to learn from it.