Saul Rosenzweig's purview: from experimenter/experimentee complementarity to idiodynamics

Following a brief personal biography, an exposition of Saul Rosenzweig's scientific contributions is presented. Starting in 1933 with experimenter/experimentee complementarity, this point of view was extended to implicit common factors in psychotherapy Rosenzweig (1936) then to the complementary pattern of the so-called schools of psychology Rosenzweig (1937). Similarly, converging approaches in personality theory emerged as another type of complementarity Rosenzweig (1944a). The three types of norms-nomothetic, demographic, and idiodynamic-within the range of dynamic human behavior were formulated and led to idiodynamics as a successor to personality theory. This formulation included the concept of the idioverse, defined as a self-creative and experiential population of events, which opened up a methodology (psychoarcheology) for reconstructing the creativity of outstanding scientific and artistic craftsmen like William James and Sigmund Freud, among psychologists, and Henry James, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne among writers of fiction.     

Unconventional Therapist: Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis is one of counseling's most prolific authors, having written more than 40 books and 500 articles, most on the topic of Rational Emotive Therapy (RET). As RET's progenitor, he has been a moving force in the current renaissance of interest in the cognitive behavior movement. In this interview Ellis discusses his theory and its application and aspects of his personal and family life.     

Pathogenesis: A New Therapist Personality Dimension Related to Therapeutic Effectiveness

The pre-project TATs of ten therapists were rated for “pathogenesis” and these ratings later correlated with their patient's level of functioning after six months of treatment. Outcome was measured in a variety of data modalities: intellectual tests, thought disorder measures, projectives, clinical status interviews, and hospitalization. Significant correlations were obtained on five of eight outcome measures. Patients of more benign (or less pathogenic) therapists demonstrated greater foresight, less schizophrenic thought disorder, greater intellectual functioning, were rated as healthier in the Clinical Status Interview, and spent less time in the hospital than patients of more pathogenic therapists.     

Betrayals of Therapist Trust: Lessons from the Field

This article explores violations of therapist trust in the practice of psychotherapy and how they can be understood from an experiential personal construct psychology (EPCP) perspective. Case examples are used to highlight the ways in which therapists, sometimes naïvely or unknowingly, place a great deal of trust in clients, and thus are vulnerable to injury. The examples also demonstrate how EPCP can be a powerful perspective from which to anticipate potential injuries, as well as to understand and heal from them. Based on the lessons learned from these examples, suggestions for clinical training are offered.     

Managing Anxiety: A Therapist Common Factor

In this paper, we propose that therapist anxiety in the therapy room, especially anxiety stirred up by difficult or triggering clients, represents a challenge to effective therapy, and that effective management of this anxiety be considered as a necessary therapist skill for conducting quality couple and family therapy (CFT). We propose that effective therapists need to be able to manage their emotions, especially their anxiety, in order to truly help their clients. The failure to do this can lead to break downs in the alliance and the flow of therapy, and these deleterious effects can be prevented when therapists actively navigate their internal states through self-awareness and ongoing introspection. Bridging psychotherapy literature, we discuss specific strategies to this end, and make clinical recommendations for CFTs and CFT training programs.     

Therapist Self-as-Context and the Curative Relationship

This article discusses how the way the therapist relates to his or her personal responses to client material during the session contributes to making the relationship with the client an effective tool for treatment. Ideas from third wave behavior therapy are used to describe aspects of therapist involvement in the relationship and modes of therapist awareness of inner responses. In two vignettes, negative client reactions to an intervention bring problematic therapist material to the fore. Both cases highlight how the stories the therapists spun about themselves as professionals and persons could easily have limited their effectiveness in responding to the material. The vignettes also illustrate how clinicians can overcome personal meanings and judgments to access a more productive mode of interacting with the feelings a critical incident in the relationship evokes in them. It is argued that observing their own content from a psychological distance makes it possible for clinicians to use their feelings without getting caught up in them. These same feelings may then help the therapist perceive how the incident relates to the client’s daily life problems. The therapist’s engagement in a sense of self-as-context is described as a therapeutic stance that provides the psychological distance needed to help overcome alliance ruptures and other potential gridlocks and which may transform the therapist’s inner response to client content into a tool for addressing important client issues.     

Sudden Death of the Therapist: The Effects on the Patient

While the termination phase of psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been discussed in the literature, the effects on the patient of a forced termination following the therapist's death have seldom been investigated. In this paper, two groups of patients (N = 35) were compared: those who experienced a planned termination and those who experienced a sudden termination as a result of their therapist's death. Data were gathered by means of detailed questionnaire and formal psychological assessment (i.e., the Grief Experience Inventory). Responses were also solicited from therapists who treated patients subsequent to the original therapist's death. Results indicate that patients forced to terminate due to the therapist's unexpected demise experienced significantly more intense grief reactions with regard to feelings of anger, despair, depersonalization, and somatization. The nature of the transference relationship with the original therapist at the time of the latter's death appeared to influence the subsequent therapeutic relationship as well. The authors present recommendations and practical guidelines concerning therapists' responsibility to their analytic patients to make reasonable accommodations in the event of their unexpected death.     

The Masochism of the Group Therapist

With tongues firmly in cheek, the authors catalogue and explicate the many miseries of the group therapist. They hypothesize a deep well of masochism to account for the otherwise inexplicable tenacity of group therapists in forming and leading their groups.     

The Therapeutic Advantage to the Family Therapist of Intervening in the Family-Clinician System

Attempting family therapy in the context of a family-clinician system poses extreme difficulties for the therapist. He cannot be effective if he diagnoses only the family system. He must broaden his analysis to include other clinicians' transactions with the family. Once he accomplishes this perceptual leap, he can intervene in the family-clinician system most effectively with paradoxical methods. He may find that a change in his own contribution to the system solves the family's problem.     

Therapist response modes in the exploration stage: timing and effectiveness

In an investigation of the exploration stage of single counselling sessions with 26 anxious female volunteer clients and 13 female doctoral student therapists, no overall association was found between client narrative processing modes and subsequent therapist verbal response modes. There was evidence in a third of the sample for an association between therapist response modes and subsequent client narrative modes, such that clients used more internal than external or reflexive narrative processing modes when therapists used open questions about feelings and reflections of feelings. Client and therapist helpfulness ratings did not differ for different therapist response modes or client narrative process modes. Hence, overall results suggested that all four therapist response modes (open questions about thoughts, open questions about feelings, restatements, reflections of feelings) are effective during the exploration stage.