Contemporary Psychotherapy: Moving Beyond a Therapeutic Dialogue

Psychotherapy was developed as a means of using words to heal emotional pain. Although a therapeutic dialogue can be helpful to many clients, some people need a more action-based intervention. Psychotherapy may be enhanced by adapting several therapeutic procedures that have been found effective in physical therapy. Where physical therapy can help clients learn to manage chronic physical pain, psychotherapy can help clients learn to manage chronic emotional pain. Both physical therapy and psychotherapy can help to facilitate awareness, flexibility, strength and endurance in order to maximize the clients functional ability.     

Contemporary Psychotherapy: Looking Backward, Looking Forward

This editorial summarizes the founding of the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, and its evolution into its current form. Also, the editor provides several recommendations for authors hoping to publish their ideas regarding psychotherapy. Finally, the current editor acknowledges the numerous people who have worked to develop, improve, and strengthen the journal.     

Group-Based Psychotherapy Integration in Theory and Practice: Therapeutic Community Revisited

A group-based theoretical integration model presented in this journal (F. Knobloch, 1996) is elaborated in practice. The core aspects of the group-based system are described and illustrated with clinical examples as they apply to a modified therapeutic community: (a) the creation of the therapeutic world to represent real life and its multiple realities; (b) the group schema model as a context for problem identification and exploration; (c) the collaboration between therapists and group members; (d) the exploration and experimentation of problems through individual and group tasks; and (e) the transfer of new behaviors to real life situations and (f) the systematic application of major psychotherapy theories and techniques.     

Contemporary Psychotherapy: Gold Mines and Land Mines

Psychotherapy has a rich past and great potential. However, psychotherapists should be aware of several areas of strength as well as some problem areas. Strengths include the benefits of a strong therapeutic alliance, a diverse range of theories, and quality research that documents the effectiveness of psychotherapy. Weaknesses include conflicting theories, financial matters, and misunderstandings between clinicians and researchers. Hopefully, mental health professionals can focus on mining the gold from the gold mines while also working to understand and disarm the land mines.     

刺激呈现时间对责任推论影响的实验研究

在社会认知中,由于所呈现的刺激都具有复杂的社会意义,其必然会在被试的心理上引起复杂的反应。实验通过对刺激时间的控制来了解个体在知觉阶段与记忆阶段所进行的责任推论是否存在差异。结果表明,工读生在刺激快速呈现时的责任判断与刺激缓慢呈现时的责任推论存在显著差异。     

The Therapeutic Relationship as Viewed by Existential Psychotherapy: Re-Embracing the World

Existential psychotherapy places pivotal significance upon the interrelational aspects of human experience. By so doing, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes the principal means through which the client's presenting symptoms and disorders are disclosed as direct expressions and outcomes of the client's overall way of being rather than as isolated and disruptive impediments. This paper examines the therapeutic relationship as viewed from four primary interrelational dimensions. Further, it focuses upon psychotherapy's tendency to exclude the world from the therapeutic relationship and provides two novel and challenging alternatives whose principal aim is to bring the world back into the therapeutic relationship.     

Synthetiki Psychotherapy: An Integrative Psychotherapy for Individuals with Schizophrenic Symptoms

During the past 22 years, the author has developed an integrative psychotherapeutic model, called Synthetiki Psychotherapy (from the Greek word synthesis), for the treatment of individuals with schizophrenic symptoms. It has been influenced by certain philosophical and ethical principles, by ancient and modern Greek civilization and culture, and by the psychotherapy integration movement, and has been tested through research at the Laboratory of Clinical and Social Psychology of the University of Crete, Greece. The principles of Synthetiki Psychotherapy are presented and discussed.     

Responsibility attribution and support provision in an intergroup context: An examination in a simulated society game1

Abstract: Two studies were conducted to examine the relationship between ingroup identification, responsibility attribution, and attitude toward support provision. The data were collected from the participants of a simulated society game named SIMINSOC (Simulated International Society; Hirose, 1997 ). The global society in the game includes two rich regions and two poor regions, and the poor regions need to obtain support from rich regions for survival. In the two studies, participants were randomly assigned to either rich or poor regions, were engaged in various activities in the game, and answered questions concerning the identification, responsibility attribution, and attitude toward support provision. The results indicated that responsibility attributions were biased to favor the ingroups. Furthermore, poor regions believed that they should be supported more than the rich regions intended to provide support. Structural equation analyses suggested that the intergroup bias in attribution was increased when identification toward the ingroup was strong. The discussion considers the implications of the findings for interactions between groups.     

心理隐喻的变迁与心理治疗模式的转换

心理治疗模式的转换始终伴随着心理隐喻的变迁,每一种心理治疗模式都蕴涵着一个独特的心理隐喻,支撑着研究领域的共同理解。揭示这些治疗模式内蕴的心理隐喻,梳理心理隐喻的变迁轨迹,有助于我们更好地理解心理治疗模式的转换规律,展望心理治疗的发展前景。     

Psyche and System: On Progress in the Integration of Individual Psychotherapy and Family Psychotherapy

This article addresses the frequency with which the same group of patients utilizes individual and family therapies, and at the same time do not constitute actual integration. The conditions under which such serial or concurrent utilization of the two forms of psychotherapy may be considered to be integrative are discussed.     

Free Will and Therapeutic Change

Much of psychology has minimized, or disregarded, the notion of free will. However, it remains a critical construct in most theories of behavioral and religious change. This paper briefly examines the free will/determinism debate and the construct of free will from the perspective of postmodern/narrative psychology, as well as integrating recent developments in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Finally, the implications of this analysis on personal responsibility in pastoral psychology are discussed.     

Outsight: Radical Behaviorism and Psychotherapy

Clinical experience suggests that a variety of neurotic and personality disorders are effectively treated by an approach to therapy that is relatively passive in appearance and is directed towards the development of self-knowledge. Behavior theory provides an economical, naturalistic analysis of the therapeutic effects of this approach. Punishment, a common method of controlling forbidden behavior, can result in pathologic avoidance and deficient awareness of one's own behavior and its relation to the environment. Traditional methods of psychoanalysis and behavior therapy provide circumstances that help the patient to observe acts and feelings and their relation to elements of the environment that are otherwise avoided. These procedures may work best when self-observation is (1) not selectively reinforced by the therapist, and (2) supplemented by explicit training in behavior analysis. These elements are combined in a treatment approach for generating observations of one's own behavior and its functional significance in the natural environment.     

Personality Disorder Attributes as Supplemental Goals for Change in Interpersonal Psychotherapy

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is a manualized, short-term (usually 12–16 sessions) based on the assumption that psychological disorders often emerge secondary to social and interpersonal problems that require active intervention to achieve symptom remission. The time-limited nature of IPT compels therapists to establish the goal of diminishing, on a weekly basis, a small number of focused interpersonal problems with a decided emphasis on proximal rather than historic conflicts and associated patterns of behavior. This strategy discourages the adoption of diffuse therapy goals and directions that have more opportunity to emerge in long-term, unstructured treatment modalities. The role of traditional personality testing in short-term therapy, when it occurs, is to identify and quantify symptom clusters that warrant attention as dependent measures in the treatment process. The role of personality factors in the genesis or maintenance of psychological disturbance is rarely addressed. The present article explores theoretical and pragmatic objections to the use of personality testing in IPT. A method is proposed for the limited but systematic incorporation of personality testing in the IPT treatment process using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III). While unreasonable to expect personality transformation through short-term therapy, the partial attenuation of maladaptive behavioral, attitudinal, and emotional reactions to stressors could prove exceedingly helpful to short-term treatments such as IPT.     

Aggression Observation Scale for Group Psychotherapy

An observational scale to record aggressive behaviors, defenses, and interventions that occur during a psychotherapy group has been developed. Content and process items were included. The content items focus on the spoken material and are on a continuum of increasing group members' awareness of and responsibility for their anger. The process items are directed to underlying psychodynamic issues on a continuum from avoiding anger, to indirect and then expression of anger. Leader interventions (responses) are also included. The development of the scale, the Aggression Observation Scale for Group Psychotherapy (AOSGP), is described including pilot testing and reliability and validity findings.     

Promoting an Empathic Dialectic for Therapeutic Change: An Integrative Review

This integrative review is focused on a formulation of therapeutic empathy. We describe the “empathic dialectic” as therapists’ capacity to emotionally resonate with patients’ internal states, such as during ruptures, and to coregulate their own and the patients’ states through mentalization. The first aim was to provide a theoretical framework for the empathic dialectic, by summarizing background literature on the empathic process, intersubjectivity, rupture repair, relational psychoanalysis, and attachment. The second aim was to conduct an integrative review of peer-reviewed articles published between the years of 2016 and 2021. After conducting a review of 28 articles, we sought to identify (1) research that supports the existence of an empathic dialectic, (2) evidence that therapists’ attachment influences the empathic dialectic, and (3) implications of the empathic dialectic for training and supervision. Results pointed to the central role of therapists’ attachment security in the empathic dialectic, and the negative repercussions of therapists’ insecurity when mentalization is underdeveloped. Results also highlighted the role of supervision as a means of enhancing trainees’ self-awareness of their attachment, and its impact on the alliance. As the American Psychological Association embraces a clinical competencies model in its accreditation of clinical psychology doctoral programs, the importance of attaining an integrative understanding of therapeutic empathy has become increasingly imperative. To this end, we conclude by promoting the empathic dialectic as a key clinical competency, and providing further recommendations for training and supervision.

     

Blame and Responsibility

This paper looks at judgments of guilt in the face of alleged wrong-doing, be it in public or in private discourse. Its concern is not the truth of such judgments, although the complexity and contestability of such claims will be stressed. The topic, instead, is what sort of activities we are engaged in, when we make our judgments on others' conduct. To examine judging as an activity it focuses on a series of problems that can occur when we blame others. On analysis, we see that these problems take the form of performative contradictions, so that the ostensible purposes of assigning guilt to others are undermined.There is clear evidence from social psychology that blame is especially frequently and inappropriately attributed to individuals in modern Western societies. On the other hand, it has often been observed how suspicious we are about the activity of judging – thus a widespread perception that a refusal to judge is somehow virtuous. My suggestion is that the sheer difficulty of attributions of responsibility, in the face of a complex and often arbitrary moral reality, frequently defeats us. This leads to a characteristic set of distortions when we blame, so that it is no surprise that we have become suspicious of all blaming activities.Yet, the paper argues, these problems need not arise when we hold others responsible. This paper therefore investigates what, exactly, can be questionable about attempts to assign guilt, and the structural logic that lies behind these problems – what will be called, adapting a term from social psychology, a belief in a just world. Such a belief takes for granted what needs to be worked for through human activity, and therefore tends to be counter-productive in dealing with misdeeds and adverse outcomes.     

Healing and Psychotherapy: The Pentecostal Tradition

This paper explores the practice of healing in the Pentecostal movement. The practice of healing has a long tradition in Pentecostal practice. The meaning of divine healing and what could be components of a theology of healing are examined. It is important for pastoral counselors, pastors, and chaplains to be aware of the importance of divine healing for Pentecostal clients.     

Technological Delegation: Responsibility for the Unintended

This article defends three interconnected premises that together demand for a new way of dealing with moral responsibility in developing and using technological artifacts. The first premise is that humans increasingly make use of dissociated technological delegation. Second, because technologies do not simply fulfill our actions, but rather mediate them, the initial aims alter and outcomes are often different from those intended. Third, since the outcomes are often unforeseen and unintended, we can no longer simply apply the traditional (modernist) models for discussing moral responsibility. We need to reinterpret moral responsibility. A schematic layout of a model on Social Role-Responsibility that incorporates these three premises is presented to allow discussion of a new way of interpreting moral responsibility.

反社会型人格障碍的心理治疗

该文从认知一行为治疗、个别治疗和团体治疗等方面,介绍了反社会型人格障碍心理治疗的研究进展情况,旨在促进国内有关反社会型人格障碍心理治疗的研究。