Therapy - treating trauma/causing trauma

• Mission Statement by Jessica Broitman, 11/9/96
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    • how people respond to trauma by Jessica Broitman, 12/14/96
      
      

I agree, from a psychotherapy research perspective the concept of profiling people to offer the most appropriate intervention is very appealing. As a researcher, I find this kind of clinical research very interesting. As a data analyst, I get immensely frustrated with trying to fit psychotherapy research into the existing paradigms for study design.

After reading the Overview of Research on Control Mastery Theory I thought that I could apply some of those concepts to the post-MI group that I work with. For example, patients who know they will be seen for one session in the hospital might fit their unconscious plan accordingly so that they convey to the therapist the most important issue the therapist can assist with in the time allowed. This same concept might hold up on the phone follow-up.

This way of thinking about the therapy session and patient communication reminds of work I did with a therapy supervisor who followed the work of Robert Langs. That kind of intense concentration focused on patient communication seems very different from more confrontational STDP approaches which place more emphasis on uncovering defenses and provoking anxiety. I think a more confrontational approach is adversarial, it seems extraordinarily difficult to maintain empathic understanding of the patient while working in this mode.

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