From cosmetics to compassion: A case study of goal focused positive psychotherapy.

This case study describes the progress of a client receiving goal focused positive psychotherapy over 34 sessions, capturing the subtlety and responsiveness of the theory in action. The client self-identified as a Mexican American heterosexual female in her early 20s who had experienced intense anxiety and recurring bouts of depression since elementary school. The primary therapeutic principles of goal focused positive psychotherapy- including hope, strengths, virtuous approach goals, incremental change, and culture- are described alongside germane interventions (one good thing, capitalization, and self-compassion). The client experienced reduction of the initial symptoms (anxiety, pessimism and low self-worth, and deficits in time management and organization). Beyond symptom diminishment, the client achieved increased agency, clarity of virtuous values, genuine caring for others, engagement with a broader range of feelings, and self-compassion. The client's cultural strengths served as a central resource for growth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Goal-focused positive psychotherapy in action: A case study.

OBJECTIVE: This case study describes one client's progression through goal-focused positive psychotherapy (GFPP), a positive psychology inspired treatment. The study aims to contribute a more nuanced understanding of GFPP by illustrating the clinical use of approach goals, hope, positive emotion, and client strengths-interventions that constitute the heart of GFPP. METHOD: The case study methodology illuminates the 33-session treatment of a self-identified European-American heterosexual female in her mid-twenties, presenting with several interpersonal concerns, and symptoms of depression and anxiety. The client met the DSM 5 criteria for generalized anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder. RESULTS: Processes and outcomes are documented through clinician and client perceptions, and weekly assessments of symptomatology and subjective well-being. CONCLUSIONS: The case study demonstrates a successful application of positive psychology consistent with GFPP's existential and humanistic psychology roots. The study should provide clinicians and theorists a greater understanding of GFPP processes and perspectives in an applied context.

Parallel process in psychodynamic supervision: The supervisor's perspective.

Nine postdoctoral-level experienced psychodynamic supervisors were interviewed about working with a supervisee on a case involving parallel process (PP) that started in therapy and was enacted in supervision. Consensual qualitative research was used to analyze transcripts of the interviews. The general pattern that emerged from the analysis of the supervisors' reports was that clients behaved unusually in session, therapists "got hooked" by this change, therapists enacted the client's behavior in supervision, supervisors "got hooked," supervisors reflected on their reactions and intervened in a different way; reported outcomes were mostly positive (e.g., enhanced growth or understanding for the therapist). Results of this qualitative investigation provide evidence of PP and clues as to how experienced supervisors observe, describe, and respond to PP in ways that promote growth, insight, and understanding for their supervisees. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A test of the sensorimotor account of vision and visual perception.

Two theories define the relationship between sensory experience and perception of location. The doctrine of specific nerve energies relies on hard-wired, genetically specified relationships between stimulation and perception, modifiable only within limits by adaptation. In a newer sensorimotor account, experience tunes the relationship between stimulation and perception. The perception of pressure phosphenes can differentiate the two theories, because the phosphene appears at a location predicted by physiological optics and in a modality predicted by specific nerve energies. Moving a finger vertically along the outer orbit of the eye while pressing gently on it through the lid during nasally directed gaze results in apparent motion of the phosphene out of phase with the finger, therefore in contradiction to information from motor efference to the finger, tactile sense at the fingertip, eyelid and bulb, joint receptors, and proprioception from muscles driving the finger. A test of the sensorimotor theory giving it every advantage had six observers in darkness moving their fingers along the eye and observing phosphenes for 1 h and 2400 motion cycles; the phosphene always obeyed the doctrine of specific nerve energies, never adapting or changing modality as the sensorimotor theory predicts.