Psychological Formulation, a Critical Viewpoint: Illness Ideology in Disguise

Abstract

Recent years have seen a surge of interest by clinical psychologists in the idea of psychological formulation. Interest in this idea has also been shown by humanistic psychologists as evidenced by a recent issue of this journal, in which formulation is offered as a possible antidote to diagnosis. In this article, I examine the idea of formulation from the viewpoint of client-centered therapy, offering a critical perspective and concluding that as formulation is ultimately about identifying a specific pathway for a specific problem, it continues to subtly promote a medical ideology, incompatible with client-centered therapy.

How Humanistic Is Positive Psychology? Lessons in Positive Psychology From Carl Rogers' Person-Centered Approach—It's the Social Environment That Must Change

“…The need for diagnosis, formulation, and all expressions of expertise over the person dissolve when it is the social environment that is the focus of intervention, not the person (Joseph, 2021 ). In this way, the positive psychologist may not be using diagnosis in the clinical sense, but if they are developing an intervention suitable for some people but not others, the same logic applies.…”