theories
We can pick up a spoon accurately in an instant without thinking. It just happens. The algorithm for everything that goes into this complex movement could take a lifetime to analyse. And yet we just do it.
Therapy and healing are much more complex. No description could fully convey what is happening. Attempts to formulate, brand and commercialise therapy methods is like trying to patent, bottle and sell the wind.
Generally theories of therapy and personality repackage cultural assumptions around one or two key concepts. Convincing stories shaped to accommodate the conventions of the day. They usually wind up being applied beyond the workable limits of their original intentions and underlying assumptions and allow us to lose sight of the detailed complexities of the real world in a maze of over-generalised concepts.
commanding the sun to rise and the sun to set
Complex and expensive therapies often take credit for the inbuilt mechanisms of self-healing that are inevitable workings of nature and culture.
Everyone inherits abilities to understand themselves and others from their family and community. And we draw on millennia of knowledge embedded in our culture and millions of years of evolution hard wired into our species. Each of us develops these into more a sophisticated understanding than the most complex or refined theory.
Therapies are effective because of the language and culture they are embedded in rather than their theoretical foundations or procedures. The most powerful components of any therapy are the knowledge and strategies contained in our shared biology, language and culture that we use routinely day to day – mostly unawares.
therapy frameworks
Therapists use the language and logic of theoretical frameworks to arrange their thoughts and their repertoire of responses to situations. Even if they seem like dogma, hype and window dressing and the methods seem like religious liturgy they do provide legitimacy, a vocabulary, an excuse to be with clients. We have to start somewhere.
Whatever a therapist's values or school of thought, whoever their teacher or guru, eventually they have to evaluate what they have been told, work out what is going on and make decisions about it all.
Theories and religions come and go. Ultimately we are the only ones who can can have our thoughts and feelings and do what we do. A theory can't do it for us.
Having said all that, like many of us, I collect theories and methods to see if they work. If they are promising I look for ways to allow similar transactions to evolve in my sessions. I have found useful ideas in most theoretical frameworks and can imagine how therapists could bring them to life. Any method of psychotherapy can be made to work.
in practice
I find that psychological theories obscure more than they reveal. Some are interesting and even informative but generally more hindrance than help in practice. In practice each client and each situation seems to require a different theory and methodology.
I have learnt more from being with other practitioners than studying their methods or theoretical frameworks. Therapies exist more in their practice and practitioners than in the words that describe them.
Extracting good practice out of written formulations is difficult. I find that discoveries I make myself integrate easily into practice whereas second or third hand formulas are not so easy to build on – and can even be a pretense.
Protocols can be dis-empowering. Even skilled therapists can be sidetracked by following protocols that are out of touch with the realities of the consulting room. Although they provide guidance many are irrelevant, time consuming and even dangerous if followed slavishly. However human nature usually wins through and clients and therapists communicate despite these distractions.
personality
I am fascinated by personality theories and types. People have such diverse strategies to deal with their experiences and get around in their worlds. I have spent hours reading and pondering them but they are not essential to therapy and I have not bothered with them here.
Maybe it's a bit early for a theory of personality. Perhaps we don't know enough yet. Or perhaps it's too late. Perhaps our thinking is too cluttered and the words exhausted though overuse.
Person Centered Therapy
Not much in the way of theories or models. Just a few simple principles that can be tried out - Simple in principle but infinitely complex in practice.
A measure of the success of this approach today is that It is still widely used without lending itself to being formulated, packaged, commercialised or legislated. Success relies on each individual.
copyright (C) John Brasted 2008
updated 13. Feb. 2012
