The integrative attitude–a personal journey

Abstract

The origins of clinical psychotherapy date from the beginning of last century and the development of broadly four foundational schools -psychoanalytic, cognitivebehavioural, humanistic and transpersonal psychologies. The imperative to integrate these schools, however, is relatively recent and in the last 25 years a professional integration movement has developed, exemplified by the formation of SEPI and the UKAPI, and 'integrative psychotherapist' is now the most popular nomenclature used in the profession. This article gives a brief history of the integration movement, reviews some issues raised by developments so far, and discusses the personal dilemma that integration evokes in the would-be integrative practitioner. Using my own journey I espouse an integrative attitude that is based on the nature of integration as an evolving personal process rather than an ideal, fixed, profession-wide position. I describe three interweaving modalities of integration I call constructive, complicit and contiguous integration, which form a developmental framework that aims to encourage the individual activity of questioning, inventing, researching and interrogating the discipline within its philosophical, professional and social context. In concluding, this article exhorts the profession to see integration as a personal journey, as a way of being that is constantly becoming and unfolding in relation with the therapist's training, experience and interaction with peers and clients. The result is indefinable and unnameable, and perhaps represents the soul of integrative psychotherapy.

The journey of an integrationist: A grounded theory analysis.

“…Microcycles of adherence-destabilization-consolidation were also hypothetically present in Lampropoulos's (2006a) narrative each time he formulated and published his own integrative account of what he was dealing with at that time (i.e., the topics of psychotherapeutic change, training, or supervision). We found a similar pattern present in Nuttall's (2008) narrative each time he tried to reconcile various psychotherapeutic approaches and formulated his own integrative accounts.…”

“…Generally speaking, maintaining integration as an explicit destination became less important for some psychotherapists as their careers progressed, though it did remain present in their endeavors (Norcross, 2006). To this extent, Nuttall (2008) described a shift from trying to formulate a new integrative approach toward a more flexible internal (personal) integration.…”

“…16, No. One (Castonguay, 2006; Lampropoulos, 2006a; Norcross, 2006; Watson, 2006) and three stand-alone articles (Blott, 2008; Giovazolias, 2005; Nuttall, 2008) were included. The sample thus included 5 female authors and 17 male.…”

“…Integration as an explicit goal (n ‫؍‬ 10, 45%) versus integration as a natural "side-effect" of development (n ‫؍‬ 12, 55%). The development of a new, integrative psychotherapeutic approach was an explicit goal for only some of the psychotherapists (Castonguay, 2006;Fodor, 2005;Giovazolias, 2005;Greenberg, 2005;Lampropoulos, 2006a;Norcross, 2006;Nuttall, 2008;Wachtel, 2005;Watson, 2006;Wolfe, 2005). Furthermore, some of these same psychotherapists demonstrated integrative tendencies even at the very beginning of their careers, creating their own conceptual frameworks (e.g., Bohart, 2005;Giovazolias, 2005;Wolfe, 2005).…”

“…The question explicitly addressed by this article—how integrative psychotherapists develop in a sequence of phases—is one that empirical studies to date have left unaddressed. Furthermore, while the present study used the same dataset as Rihacek and Danelova’s (2015) study (i.e., autobiographic chapters published in Goldfried, 2005), it added several autobiographic articles not analyzed before (Blott, 2008; Castonguay, 2006; Giovazolias, 2005; Lampropoulos, 2006a; Norcross, 2006; Nuttall, 2008; Watson, 2006), and it also utilized author feedback as a means of validation. Having served as coders in Rihacek and Danelova’s (2015) study, the authors built on their familiarity with the data.…”