There have been countless attempts to circumvent talk-therapy in the hope of speeding up the process of psychotherapy or helping a person get better, quicker; from ascertaining the person's ‘bile' quotient, to electroconvulsive treatment, to the failed but initially promised so-called miracle of lobotomy, to Domain/Delgado crawling technique, to Esalen/Big Sur in California, to est training, to marathon groups, to this or that, and now to what is advertised as the Diametric Model of the Mind.
And since Freud revealed techniques for a two-person talk therapy, all of these newer brain-storms (including cog./beh. techniques) have claimed success, and in addition, have eulogized the alleged demise of psychodynamic psychotherapy, or psychoanalysis proper.
Sorry folks, nothing works like trying to know what it is that bothers you, and by developing ways of revealing it, and working on it, and working it through. All else is mirage, including the so-called Diametric Model developed in part by a sociologist who may or may not have any training in psychopathology but nevertheless promises gold at the end of the rainbow.
According to most of these inventors, all you have to do is teach someone to be normal - that is, balance it all out. If someone is at the schizophrenic end and being too "mentalistic," then use techniques to teach them to be a bit more autistic in order to balance it all out. Are you serious?
One of the problems with such promises is that psychopathology is mostly perverse symptomatology that mimics, or is displaced away from one's disappointments and angers. And the secret that some of these inventors don't have any idea about concerns the unmitigated fact that symptoms do not listen to, or understand, or want to understand logic. You absolutely cannot talk logic to a phobia, or to an intrusive thought, or to an obsession, or to a compulsion, or to a hallucination, or to a delusion.
In order to treat such phenomena, one must understand how to unravel the symptom through the psychodynamics of talk-therapy, step by step. Otherwise, it can't be done no matter what kind of fancy name you apply to the new "technique."
Psychodynamic psychotherapy still reigns supreme. Other stuff is an outgrowth of the instant gratification spirit and hopes of the culture at hand, Albert Ellis notwithstanding.
Yes, it is true that at most universities, cognitive/behavioral therapy has gained the ascendancy over psychodynamic psychotherapy. However, in most literature courses throughout the world, psychoanalysis becomes the model for understanding human nature, and interactional phenomena between people, and also becomes the tool for probing, understanding, and penetrating the deepest levels of the psyche - assuming of course that some people see that the construct of "psyche" is still a utilitarian one.
Henryism
Be able to say "No" at least once in a while and be available to discuss it.
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/A2044C.aspx
The Dictionary Corner
Labile - Clinical instability characterized by dyscontrol of emotion.
Malapropism - Mistakenly sounded words because of similarity to sound of another word.
Sublimation - Psychoanalytic concept in which impulse and libido are harnessed and converted into productive work energy; instinct into non-instinct.
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14650-0/dictionary-of-psyc...
