The mandala of psychotherapy: The universal use of paradox: New understanding and more confusion.

Abstract

Regardless of differences in definition, paradox is widely practiced and written about in the psychotherapy literature. This article suggests a graphic "mandala" as a way of examining paradox based on three dimensions involved in the paradoxical intervention: type of delivery ("hard" or "soft"); type of patient ("neurotic" or "psychotic"); degree of explicitness or implicitness. The implications of this mandala for therapists are discussed including the need to heighten awareness of the little understood and delicate interaction between the therapist's personality, the type of client, and the strategic paradoxical interventions used in treatment.The mandala in its various forms symbolizes the different levels of energy locked in the human organism. . . . A properly drawn mandala is a book in itself containing a great deal of information but he who would read the symbols must learn the language.- Jacobs, 1961, cited in DeRopp, 1968 Jay Haley (1963 described the paradox in psychotherapy in a simple yet elegant way: "When a therapist indicates he will help a patient over a problem and within that framework he encourages

Mandala Coloring as a Therapeutic Tool in Treating Stress-Anxiety-Depression Syndrome

“…In this paper, the authors have chosen to focus on mandala coloring as a therapeutic tool, which Mozdzierz, Lisiecki and Macchitelli (1989) and Goforth ( 2001) described as powerful and ubiquitous encouragenic in art therapy. The authors have used this as a form of no-talk therapy (see Straus, 1999, for detail) in counseling with their clients, especially those who experience stress, anxiety and the early stage of depression (mild to moderate level of severity).…”