During the five decades that I have been a psychologist, I have seen a series of psychotherapeutic practices come and go. Today, one in three Americans has visited one or another of the 250,000 accredited practitioners making offerings. Not only has the number of therapists burgeoned, but also the varieties of therapy have become a veritable smorgasbord. Assumptions underlying various bursts of therapist zeal will be explored and linked to prominent cultural and social forces in recent history.
Panel 02 from the Evolution of Psychotherapy 1995 - History of Psychotherapy
Featuring Erving Polster, Ph.D.; Ernest Rossi, Ph.D.; Margaret Singer, Ph.D.; and Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Moderated by Janet Edgette, PsyD.
Methods for training therapists customarily are directed to developing cognitive abilities. Using Milton Erickson as a model, an alternate, experiential approach is offered. The "evoking style" of the therapist determines the outcome of the treatment more than the theoretical and clinical methods to which the therapist ascribes.
The evolution of psychotherapeutic methods over the past 200 years from Mesmer through the psychoanalytic schools, behaviorism and current cognitive psychology tells a fascinating tale of our evolving understanding of human nature. In this address we will trace the development of fundamental techniques such as suggestion, free association, active imagination, gestalt dialogue, focusing, Erickson's indirect approaches and what I now call "The Basic Accessing Question."
The author traces the evolution of psychodynamic theory over the past fifty years and demonstrates how various individuals and schools of thought have contributed to increasing conceptual clarity despite significant continuing differences. Along with these theoretical advances, there have been important changes in analytically-oriented therapeutic techniques.
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.
The development of cognitive-behavior therapy parallels major developments in how to conceptualize the role of cognition in psychopathology and behavior change. Dr. Meichenbaum will trace his "personal journey" as a clinician and researcher, noting the altering views of cognition from a behavioral, information processing and constructive narrative perspective. He will examine the therapeutic and research implications of this shift.
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.
Epicurus, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche are forefathers of contemporary psychotherapy. Freud was aware of these wellsprings of modern therapy, and Jung brings them specifically into his writing and his methods. We not only get hints from these forefathers, but we also find a lasting base in them, such as Bubar's "l-thou" construct or Kierkegaard's emphasis on the ultimate relationship of the self to life. These ideas are assumed in Freud, Jung, Adler, Rank, Fromm and other leading therapists in our day. It is these latter therapists who have given us the web of ideas which underlie contemporary psychotherapy.