Perspective of power in therapeutic relationships

Article Abstract:

In a somewhat critical assessment of traditional psychotherapy approaches, the women's healthcare movement found that the inability of psychiatrists and psychologists to help certain clients is often hidden behind a powerful professional facade which results in fostering a sense of powerlessness and dependency in clients. The encounter between a psychotherapist and a client is viewed as a meeting of two actors with unequal power related to social position, gender, race, or education, and traditional therapy is seen as being shaped by that inequality. To achieve the emotional and social emancipation of clients, therapists should aim at distributing power more equally in the helping process. One way to accomplish this would be to match clients and therapists who have had similar experiences, circumstances and problems, which would result in reciprocal decision making. This would entail giving clients opportunities for choice in an open system in which both therapist and client have input and would allow for spontaneous shifts in power. Clients could then learn to exercise negotiation skills. Therapists can learn to express themselves in language attuned to their client's, and can set limits by not participating in more than 50 percent of the therapeutic work. Clients can then learn to engage in power exchanges by using acquired negotiating skills to participate in decision making, which will lead to a sense of freedom and an independent ability to create choices, explore feelings, and find solutions to problems. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Social aspects, Women

---

Clinical consequences of a formal mode of science of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

Article Abstract:

A formal mode of science approach in the analysis of therapaeutic dialogue and its implications are discussed. The mathematical analyses of quantified measures of communication between patient and therapist enable the latter to define deeper clinical phenomena and view new insights. This system may also pave the way for therapists to do self-processing or self-analysis which can greatly improve their own emotional and psychological capabilities.

---

Part I: psychoanalysis

Article Abstract:

Countertransference has been integrated into psychoanalysis since the mid-1980s, with clinicians aiming for a better understanding of its nature and using countertransference responses in facilitating therapeutic change. The concept has become a consensus area among psychoanalysts of various schools of thought and has been widely recognized as a highly useful form of communication.

Analysis, Column, Countertransference (Psychology)

Similar abstracts:

• Abstracts: A developmental perspective on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Putting DSM-IV in perspective
• Abstracts: Dissociative experiences in the general population. Dissociation and childhood trauma in psychologically disturbed adolescents
• Abstracts: A patient-therapist's reaction to her therapist's serious illness. part 2 Dream and suicide
• Abstracts: Characteristics of function-specific pathways in the sympathetic nervous system. Quantal analyses of quantal analysis
• Abstracts: Representation of colors in the blind, color-blind and normally sighted. Color space of normally sighted and color-deficient observers reconstructed from color naming

This website is not affiliated with document authors or copyright owners. This page is provided for informational purposes only. Unintentional errors are possible.