Philosophical issues in psychotherapy.

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the importance and inevitability of nonscientific issues in psychotherapy and psychopathology by addressing four closely related topics: the presence of a priori factors such as tacit assumptions and narrative foms; the inescapable presence of values; the way in which psychotherapy and psychopathology are partly deflned by, and in turn shape, current societal and cultural outlooks; and the status of clients as agents independent of their status as objects of scientifically based healing. The way in which these facton operate is illustrated in the case of a 45-year-old woman suffering from depression, physical illnesses, and family problems. Implications for quantitative and qualiiathte research are suggested.The present assignment to demonstrate the value of philosophical thinking for clinical psychology and psychotherapy contains the tacit assumption that contemporary clinicians and researchers typically consider scientific modes of thought to be a sufficient frame of reference for their disciplinary activities. It is our intention to challenge the assumption that psychotherapy, psychopathology, and psychodiagnosis can be constituted solely on the knowledge base provided by the "objective" findings of empirical psychology and biology, or can be conceived only as a compendium of "techniques." We do so by addressing

La Base y el Origen Socio-cultural de las Psicoterapias Cognitivas

“…Por otro lado, en psicoterapia cognitiva se hace evidente la ética protestante (Sampson, 1981). En este sentido, la terapia cognitiva (y cognitivo-conductual) supone un ser humano que es objetivo y solucionador de problemas (Messer & Woolfolk, 1998). Podemos inferir que de ahí se deriva el énfasis en las técnicas, así como la importancia dada a la demostración de su eficacia (Messer & Warren, 1990).…”

Case-Based Studies as a Source of Unity in Applied Psychology.

“…The visions of reality refer to the tragic, comic, romantic, and ironic genres of literature that have been elaborated on most extensively by the literary critic Northrop Frye (1957) and applied to psychoanalysis by Roy Schafer (1976). For a fuller exposition of the visions and how they apply to different forms of therapy, such as behavioral, humanistic, and psychoanalytic, see Messer and Winokur (1984) and Messer and Woolfolk (1998).…”

"A New Therapy for Each Patient": Integrative Case Formulation and Treatment in the Case of Ms. Q

“…For example, the cognitive-behavioral therapist's emphasis on action-oriented problem-solving is incompatible with the psychodynamic therapist's emphasis on exploration and tolerance for ambiguity (Messer & Woolfolk, 1998). Messer & Winokur (1980) astutely notice that in graduate school, "it does not take long before students sort themselves out as behaviorally or psychodynamically oriented, perhaps because they soon find one approach or the other more compatible with their own views of reality."…”