ABSTRACT
This article addresses a serious problem faced by the field of psychotherapy in relying upon and trusting research, theory, clinical knowledge, or other sources as real, hard, and objective. The serious underlying problem is that the field lives and works in an aerie-faerie world composed of ethereal, illusory, false "psychorealities." Although grand solutions have been introduced, none has succeeded in solving the problem. The introduction concludes with a preview of some current solutions by some of the leading proponents dealing with the problem of what the clinician can trust.
Subject(s)
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Professional Competence , Psychotherapy/standards , Attitude , Evidence-Based Medicine , HumansABSTRACT
In an experiential alternative, the therapist and the client attend mainly to a "third thing" throughout the session instead of to one another. A case is presented in which the experiential alternative can offer some new, and perhaps interesting, uses of the therapist's personal reactions in comparison with the uses of countertransference and personal reactions of the therapist when therapist and client attend mainly to one another throughout the session. These new uses are presented and illustrated.
Subject(s)
Countertransference , Psychotherapy/methods , Attention , Emotions , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
The field of psychotherapy rests on a foundation of basic propositions, fundamental starting points or cornerstones, and ideas that are generally taken for granted as fundamental givens or truths. A case is presented that there are ways in which foundational beliefs may be kept essentially immune from careful explication, study, examination, analysis, and challenge, and therefore from constructive improvement and change. Borrowed largely from the neighboring field of philosophy of science, 5 solutions are presented to assist in explicating, challenging, improving, and changing foundational beliefs. The subsequent 2 articles (E. Erwin, 2000; J. F. Rychlak, 2000) illustrate how these philosophy of science methods may be applied to 2 foundational beliefs in the field of psychotherapy.
Subject(s)
Philosophy , Psychotherapy , Science , HumansABSTRACT
Two comments/questions are flagged and discussed in response to an article by E. David Klonsky on the DSM classification of personality disorders: (a) What is a good way to arrive at the categories of the thing you want to categorize? (b) Categorizing some thing has nothing to do with whether the thing is real, but it is an exceedingly clever ploy.
Subject(s)
Personality Disorders/classification , Diagnosis, Differential , Humans , Personality Disorders/diagnosis , Psychiatric Status Rating Scales , Psychotherapy , Research Design , Terminology as TopicABSTRACT
A case is presented that the field of psychotherapy has some embarrassing problems that are collectively denied and that it is important for the field to admit they exist so that steps can be taken toward their resolution. A provisional list of 11 problems is proposed, together with suggested avenues toward solution. The invitation is to consider, revise, improve, and extend the list of embarrassing problems in a spirit of open debate and discussion to help advance the field of psychotherapy by enabling efforts toward resolution of these embarrassing problems.
Subject(s)
Problem Solving , Psychotherapy , Curriculum , Humans , Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care , Professional Competence , Psychotherapy/education , ResearchABSTRACT
Proposals for the education and training of psychotherapists are offered in a spirit of constructive good faith, yet they are unabashedly unrealistic in departing from some common canons of education and training. Seven principles are proposed as a suggested starting point for further discussion of the education and training of psychotherapists.
Subject(s)
Psychotherapy/education , Attitude of Health Personnel , Clinical Competence , Education, Graduate , Humans , Internship and Residency , Psychotherapy/standards , Research , Teaching/methods , Teaching/standardsABSTRACT
It is almost exceptional that psychotherapy researchers set out to answer questions like these: What are some new and better ways of doing actual in-session psychotherapeutic work? What are some new and better changes that psychotherapy can help bring about, and what are some new and better ways of helping to bring them about? The purpose of this special series of papers is to provide a forum for researchers to tell how to do research to answer those questions, i.e., to present practical and useful methodologies, designs, and strategies that are helpful in answering these questions.
Subject(s)
Psychotherapy , Research , HumansABSTRACT
A discovery-oriented approach to psychotherapy research relies on discovery-oriented research questions. Four such questions are illustrated, together with the logistics of this approach to research, and the practical working steps in carrying out a program of discovery-oriented research. A case is made for the superior elegance of the discovery-oriented approach to psychotherapy research.
Subject(s)
Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care , Psychotherapy/methods , Research Design , Adaptation, Psychological , HumansABSTRACT
Although psychotherapy research teams have been in existence since the 1940s, one of the reasons they are not more popular is the absence of literature on how they operate. There is essentially no literature on the organization and administration of psychotherapy research teams, on the management of their everyday practical issues, decisions, and problems. In order to open the way for a dialogue on these matters, an inside view is provided of one relatively productive psychotherapy research team. The topics include the mission and goal, nature and size of the team, administrative locale, team contract, meetings and homework, leadership and decision-making, the research tape library, and what team members get from participation on the team.
