For the past half-century there has been a remarkable and continual evolution in the theory and practice of psychotherapy. Now that evolution shows signs of becoming a revolution. Many elements of these changes are, as yet, only scantily represented in the literature, but they are the stuff of bull sessions, the more liberated case conferences and solitary, sometimes fearful, experimentations. This transition comes about from a variety of influences, among which three are particularly worthy of examination for what they suggest about what is likely to emerge a half-century from now.
My own physical disabilities as well as my performance anxiety during my childhood and adolescence impelled me to read many ancient and modern philosophers who had worked on the philosophy of human happiness and unhappiness. Thinking about their views and adapting them to my own life, I made myself distinctly less disturbed as well as less disturbable.
In the 1990's all factors of therapy are changing. The way of financing therapy is changing, there are new types of clientele, there are striking differences in ideology and the training of therapists is becoming a new kind of enterprise.
Panel 05 from the Evolution of Psychotherapy 1995 - Transference / Countertransference
Featuring Otto Kernberg, M.D.; James Masterson, M.D.; Salvador Minuchin, M.D.; and Irvin Yalom, M.D.
Moderated by Ellyn Bader, PhD.
The proliferation of therapeutic groups, either self-help or professionally staffed, has dramatically expanded the applicability of psychotherapy. This development reflects society's increased willingness to deal communally with personal problems that were previously restricted to private psychotherapeutic sessions. Gestalt group therapy, with its original emphasis on the freshness and pungency of individual experience has also extended its perspective to group work. Dr. Miriam Polster describes how the gestalt approach enlivens group focus and interaction through its principles of awareness and experiment-and especially through its attention to the quality of the contact between group members.
The focus of this workshop is on problems in therapy: overdependency, ''negative transference,'' acting out, therapeutic impasse and resistance. The same dysfunctional beliefs that maintain psychological disorders interfere with therapeutic change. Specific strategies pinpoint these beliefs as well as the cognitive distortions. This workshop will describe treatment variations for the difficult disorders such as borderline personality, chronic depression and severe agoraphobia.
Existential psychotherapy is more properly viewed as a therapy informed by a sensibiity to existential issues, rather than as a discrete, self-contained school of therapy. It addresses the anxiety embedded in our consciousness of the parameters of existence, especially in our confrontation with death, meaninglessness, freedom, and isolation. I shall discuss these concerns, particularly those with the greatest relevance to everyday therapy practice. I shall discuss the implications of the existential sensibility for the conduct of therapy and the therapeutic relationship. Genuineness and authenticity are necessary.
Anyone can perform brief or short-term therapy, but unless pivotal issues are addressed, the treatment will, at best, be too narrow and restricted. It is essential to employ empirically established methods whenever possible, but also to have a framework and rationale for on-the-spot inventiveness. This Invited Address will explain how to be precise and targeted while also ensuring that interactive healing processes are put into effect.
In the ancient world, the philosopher was a physician of the soul who, employing the healing word (iatroi /ogoi), offered counsel to persons perplexed by problems in living. After the triumph of Christianity, the priest as confessor-counselor replaced the philosopher as rhetorician of consolation. With the birth of psychiatry, and especially since the Freudian revolution, we call helping persons with words "psychotherapy." I shall try to show that without a decisive separation of rhetorical healing from medical healing, psychotherapy as the secular cure of souls is doomed to extinction.