From the EFT thread:
using a brief therapy or coaching model is generally producing much deeper results in a much shorter period of time ......
I LOVED doing talk therapy, but when I took a hard look at outcomes (at least as far as I could determine) power therapy outcomes were at least as successful and much, much shorter!
My interest is in long term counselling to assist the client in moving towards and beyond what Ken Wilber calls the Centaur stage of consciousness. This requires that the client finds the resources to make the leap to the top of Mazlow's heirarchy, to what Rogers called the "fully-functioning person" and beyond that to a stage where engagement with the subtle and causal becomes the obvious next step.
Are you serious in suggesting that this can be achieved in short-term therapy?
I know that in the UK there are many pressures on contracts: time, financial, and the commitment of the counsellor being the three, but what I think you are saying is that brief focused counselling is not just a quick fix which is likely to unravel at the first or second challenge to the client, but a deep resolution of the underlying issues.
Care to say more?
I can't off-hand give a reference as this was given to me years ago, in the 90s. But one study into the different models of counselling found that with regard to outcomes, no therapy was better than any other, and - what really interested me - people requiring counselling for perceived problems who received none had outcomes measured (by ways I don't recall) equal to those counselled, after a certain lapse of time.
At any rate, whatever this piece of research was, it concluded that the model of therapy employed was irrelevant: what seemed to help the client, if anything did, was just having someone's attention and talking (which seems contarary to clients having counselling coming out over time equal to those getting no counselling - so to be truly accurate I'd have to find the reference and look it up again).
Just thought I'd throw that into the mix!
V
I've come across similar paper (could be same), Venetian, the main conclusion I seem to remember is that the outcome mostly depended on the qualities of the therapist rather than the mode of therapy.
I do think there is a place for both long-term therapy and brief therapy, it does very much depend on the individual client and their relationship with their issue. From personal experience as a therapist and client, I am aware that very deep and profound therapeutic change is possible in a very short space of time. It sometimes may not be appropriate or possible for the change to be rapid (and permanent), but when does happen I am grateful and delighted foc my clients.
For those of us who like to offer quickie therapy 😉 (meaning - short-term!), there is a lovely book Expectation: The Very Brief Therapy , this gives concise accounts of some very, very brief psychological therapy approaches.
I personally never assume that the client will commit to more than one session with me (many do and that's fine - but some may not be able to afford the time or money, or my style may not suit them) - so I do everything I can in that first (potentially only) session for the client to experience some meaningful change, however small, and to take away some tools that they can use for themselves in the future. On the other hand, in my current work as a therapist in the NHS we have the luxury of time (my service at the moment does not impose strict limitations on the number of therapy hours each client could have), the client does not have the pressure of having to pay for the sessions, so we may spend 2-3 sessions just on assessing the problem.
Masha
what really interested me - people requiring counselling for perceived problems who received none had outcomes measured (by ways I don't recall) equal to those counselled, after a certain lapse of time.
Hi, V
well, perhaps fortunately, I don't remember THAT bit of research: unless you are talking about the so-called "waiting list effect" which demonstrated that clients who had been placed on a waiting list improved faster than those who were not, before either group had had any counselling. I don't have the reference now, I'm afraid.
The vast majority of clients are measurably healthier after counselling, and thanks to CORE outcome data, it is becoming possible to predict who are less likely to improve rapidly, and who may, in fact, become more disturbed.
Hi, V
well, perhaps fortunately, I don't remember THAT bit of research: unless you are talking about the so-called "waiting list effect" which demonstrated that clients who had been placed on a waiting list improved faster than those who were not, before either group had had any counselling. I don't have the reference now, I'm afraid.
The vast majority of clients are measurably healthier after counselling, and thanks to CORE outcome data, it is becoming possible to predict who are less likely to improve rapidly, and who may, in fact, become more disturbed.
I wasn't looking but came across the book: "Psychotherapy and its Discontents" ed. by Windy Dryden and Colin Feltham, Open Uni Press, 1992. This contains eight distinguished critics of psychotherapy writing papers with, to be fair, eight psychotherapists responding (and the critics replying in brief again their rebuttals). You'll be interested in this: it's a challenge and in places I remember finding it a devastating critique.
Includes:
* The inadequacy of research concerning outcomes
* The possibility that psychotherapy is no more effective than no treatment
* the consumer's experience of therapy as harmful
* The mystically self-protective nature of psychotherapy and its culture
* The pretentiousness of therapists' explanations
* Widespread fallibility of therapists
* Psychotherapy's anachronistic detachment from new-paradigm views
... and so forth! A challenge indeed to the open-minded. About 15 years since I read it but the basic gist certainly effected my thinking. Maybe every psychotherapist should read it?
V
Hi V, David and all,
* The inadequacy of research concerning outcomes
* The possibility that psychotherapy is no more effective than no treatment
* the consumer's experience of therapy as harmful
* The mystically self-protective nature of psychotherapy and its culture
* The pretentiousness of therapists' explanations
* Widespread fallibility of therapists
* Psychotherapy's anachronistic detachment from new-paradigm views
I wonder what would happen if you exchanged the word "psychotherapy" with Reiki, Crystal healing, Religion, Clinical psychology, Allopathic medicine, Spiritual healing, TCM... the list goes on.
I do think that things are getting better in evidence building and CORE does appear to be a useful tool. As records of outcomes build up some interesting patterns will emerge and I suspect there is many years of research ahead. In clinical psychology the research into CBT and mindfulness is building an evidence base also. I look forward to research on neurological correlates with psychological measures in meditation in particular. Then the next step will be to look at patterns of heat and other sensations that related to subtle body structures will be looked into.
From my own experience and from the area of literature that has interested me pyscho/spiritual/somatic/energetic processes of change are complex. There are patterns, there are maps, but even these are a little vague and always will be. Times change and we are all different. Often help from a "spriritual friend" helps but they can be hard to find. Techniques are useful but each one has to take the step to work on themselves even if help can be offered along the way.
Sometimes healings of the most remarkable kind can happen in a moment. Sometimes nothing seems to move even over a whole life.
Norbu
I wasn't looking but came across the book: "Psychotherapy and its Discontents" ed. by Windy Dryden and Colin Feltham, Open Uni Press, 1992.
Hi V,
as you point out, that was 1992, and the title was a reference to "civilization and its discontents" by one S Freud.
The case has been won, I think, and there are now a plethora of outcome measures that are available for therapists (and clients) to use. Although there are certainly bad therapists out there who are accredited, and good ones who are not.
Therapy at its best is essentially subversive, freeing the client from the artificial constraints of society and family conditioning, to follow their own path by free(er) choice. Therapy to that depth will never be accepted by a society which depends on people toeing the line and being easily led. What disturbs me is that nowadays therapy is becoming equated with the alleviation of symptoms preventing the client from getting back to work, as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
It's Windy Dryden, btw. I think his ambition was to publish 100 books, and he's probably there by now. I had about six of them at one time. He is an REBT therapist.
🙂 d