Constructive Metatheory: II. Implications for Psychotherapy

Abstract

The implications of constructive metatheory for the conceptualization and practice of psychotherapy are briefly outlined. It is argued that the constructivist therapist construes the client as an active and developing process, and that psychological problems are approached not as piecemeal flaws or deficiencies, but as expressions of current discrepancies between an individual's adaptive capacities and the challenges she or he faces. Likewise, the process of psychotherapy is portrayed as one of trial-and-error experimentation with different (novel) ways of “being in the world.” Ideally, the client and therapist create an intimate and emotionally charged alliance in and from which the client can explore and experiment with self and world relationships. These practical features dovetail with many assertions of the major me-tatheories of psychotherapy, and it is argued that constructive metatheory may be uniauely suited to facilitating attempts at conceptual integration