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Coherence therapy is a system of psychotherapy based in the theory that symptoms of mood, thought and behavior are produced coherently according to the person's current mental models of reality, most of which are implicit and unconscious. [1] It was founded by Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley in the 1990s. [2] It has been considered among the most well respected postmodern/constructivist therapies. [3]
The basis of coherence therapy is the principle of symptom coherence. This is the view that any response of the brain–mind–body system is an expression of coherent personal constructs (or schemas), which are nonverbal, emotional, perceptual and somatic knowings, not verbal-cognitive propositions. [4] A therapy client's presenting symptoms are understood as an activation and enactment of specific constructs. [5] The principle of symptom coherence can be found in varying degrees, explicitly or implicitly, in the writings of a number of historical psychotherapy theorists, including Sigmund Freud (1923), Harry Stack Sullivan (1948), Carl Jung (1964), R. D. Laing (1967), Gregory Bateson (1972), Virginia Satir (1972), Paul Watzlawick (1974), Eugene Gendlin (1982), Vittorio Guidano & Giovanni Liotti (1983), Les Greenberg (1993), Bessel van der Kolk (1994), Robert Kegan & Lisa Lahey (2001), Sue Johnson (2004), and others. [6]
The principle of symptom coherence maintains that an individual's seemingly irrational, out-of-control symptoms are actually sensible, cogent, orderly expressions of the person's existing constructions of self and world, rather than a disorder or pathology. [7] Even a person's psychological resistance to change is seen as a result of the coherence of the person's mental constructions. [8] Thus, coherence therapy, like some other postmodern therapies, approaches a person's resistance to change as an ally in psychotherapy and not an enemy. [9]
Coherence therapy is considered a type of psychological constructivism. It differs from some other forms of constructivism in that the principle of symptom coherence is fully explicit and rigorously operationalized, guiding and informing the entire methodology. The process of coherence therapy is experiential rather than analytic, and in this regard is similar to Gestalt therapy, Focusing or Hakomi. The aim is for the client to come into direct, emotional experience of the unconscious personal constructs (akin to complexes or ego-states) which produce an unwanted symptom and to undergo a natural process of revising or dissolving these constructs, thereby eliminating the symptom. Practitioners claim that the entire process often requires a dozen sessions or less, although it can take longer when the meanings and emotions underlying the symptom are particularly complex or intense. [10]
Symptom coherence is defined by Ecker and Hulley as follows: [7]
There are several forms of symptom coherence. Some symptoms are necessary because they serve a crucial function (such as depression that protects against feeling and expressing anger), while others have no function but are necessary in the sense of being an inevitable effect, or by-product, caused by some other adaptive, coherent but unconscious response (such as depression resulting from isolation, which itself is a strategy for feeling safe). Both functional and functionless symptoms are coherent, according to the client's own material. [7]
In other words, the theory states that symptoms are produced by how the individual strives, without conscious awareness, to carry out self-protecting or self-affirming purposes formed in the course of living. This model of symptom production fits into the broader category of psychological constructivism, which views the person as having profound, if unrecognized, agency in shaping experience and behavior. [11]
Symptom coherence does not apply to those symptoms that are not directly or indirectly caused by implicit schemas or emotional learnings—for example, hypothyroidism-induced depression, autism, and biochemical addiction. [12]
As a tool for identifying all of a person's relevant schemas or constructions of reality, Ecker and Hulley defined several logically hierarchical domains or orders of construction (inspired by Gregory Bateson): [7]
A person's first-order symptoms of thought, mood, or behavior follow from a second-order construal of the situation, and that second-order construal is powerfully influenced by the person's third- and fourth-order constructions. Hence the third and higher orders constitute what Ecker and Hulley call "the emotional truth of the symptom", which are the meanings and purposes that are intended to be discovered, integrated, and transformed in therapy. [7]
Coherence therapy was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s as Ecker and Hulley investigated why certain psychotherapy sessions seemed to produce deep transformations of emotional meaning and immediate symptom cessation, while most sessions did not. Studying many such transformative sessions for several years, they concluded that in these sessions, the therapist had desisted from doing anything to oppose or counteract the symptom, and the client had a powerful, felt experience of some previously unrecognized "emotional truth" that was making the symptom necessary to have.
Ecker and Hulley began developing experiential methods to intentionally facilitate this process. They found that a majority of their clients could begin having experiences of the underlying coherence of their symptoms from the first session. In addition to creating a methodology for swift retrieval of the emotional schemas driving symptom production, they also identified the process by which retrieved schemas then undergo profound change or dissolution: the retrieved emotional schema must be activated while concurrently the individual vividly experiences something that sharply contradicts it. Neuroscientists subsequently determined that these same steps are precisely what unlocks and deletes the neural circuit in implicit memory that stores an emotional learning—the process of reconsolidation.
Due to the swiftness of change that Ecker and Hulley began experiencing with many of their clients, they initially named this new system depth-oriented brief therapy (DOBT).
In 2005, Ecker and Hulley began calling the system coherence therapy in order for the name to more clearly reflect the central principle of the approach, and also because many therapists had come to associate the phrase "brief therapy" with depth-avoidant methods that they regard as superficial.
In a series of three articles published in the Journal of Constructivist Psychology from 2007 to 2009, Bruce Ecker and Brian Toomey presented evidence that coherence therapy may be one of the systems of psychotherapy which, according to current neuroscience, makes fullest use of the brain's built-in capacities for change. [13]
Ecker and Toomey argued that the mechanism of change in coherence therapy correlates with the recently discovered neural process of "memory reconsolidation", a process that can "unwire" and delete longstanding emotional conditioning held in implicit memory. [13] [14] The assertions that coherence therapy achieves implicit memory deletion are unproven but align with the growing body of evidence supporting memory reconsolidation. [15] Ecker and colleagues claim that: (a) their procedural steps match those identified by neuroscientists for reconsolidation, (b) their procedural steps result in effortless cessation of symptoms, and (c) the emotional experience of the retrieved, symptom-generating emotional schemas can no longer be evoked by cues that formerly evoked it strongly. [16]
The process of removing the neural basis of the symptom in coherence therapy (and in similar postmodern therapies) is different from the counteractive strategy of some behavioral therapies. [16] In such behavioral therapies, new preferred behavioral patterns are typically practiced to compete against and hopefully override the unwanted ones; this counteractive process, like the "extinction" of conditioned responses in animals, is known to be inherently unstable and prone to relapse, because the neural circuit of the unwanted pattern continues to exist even when the unwanted pattern is in abeyance. [17] Through reconsolidation, the unwanted neural circuits are "unwired" and cannot relapse. [18]
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Though it was originally designed to treat depression, its uses have been expanded to include the treatment of many mental health conditions, including anxiety, substance use disorders, marital problems, and eating disorders. CBT includes a number of cognitive or behavioral psychotherapies that treat defined psychopathologies using evidence-based techniques and strategies.
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based psychotherapy that began with efforts to treat personality disorders and interpersonal conflicts. Evidence suggests that DBT can be useful in treating mood disorders and suicidal ideation, as well as for changing behavioral patterns such as self-harm and substance use. DBT evolved into a process in which the therapist and client work with acceptance and change-oriented strategies, and ultimately balance and synthesize them—comparable to the philosophical dialectical process of thesis and antithesis followed by synthesis.
Within personality psychology, personal construct theory (PCT) or personal construct psychology (PCP) is a theory of personality and cognition developed by the American psychologist George Kelly in the 1950s. The theory addresses the psychological reasons for actions. Kelly proposed that individuals can be psychologically evaluated according to similarity–dissimilarity poles, which he called personal constructs. The theory is considered by some psychologists as forerunner to theories of cognitive therapy.
In psychology and cognitive science, a schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information, such as a mental schema or conceptual model. Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. Schemata can help in understanding the world and the rapidly changing environment. People can organize new perceptions into schemata quickly as most situations do not require complex thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required.
Integrative psychotherapy is the integration of elements from different schools of psychotherapy in the treatment of a client. Integrative psychotherapy may also refer to the psychotherapeutic process of integrating the personality: uniting the "affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems within a person".
Emotional reasoning is a cognitive process by which an individual concludes that their emotional reaction proves something is true, despite contrary empirical evidence. Emotional reasoning creates an 'emotional truth', which may be in direct conflict with the inverse 'perceptional truth'. It can create feelings of anxiety, fear, and apprehension in existing stressful situations, and as such, is often associated with or triggered by panic disorder or anxiety disorder. For example, even though a spouse has shown only devotion, a person using emotional reasoning might conclude, "I know my spouse is being unfaithful because I feel jealous."
The Internal Family Systems Model (IFS) is an integrative approach to individual psychotherapy developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It combines systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. IFS uses family systems theory to understand how these collections of subpersonalities are organized.
Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.
Emotionally focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) are a family of related approaches to psychotherapy with individuals, couples, or families. EFT approaches include elements of experiential therapy, systemic therapy, and attachment theory. EFT is usually a short-term treatment. EFT approaches are based on the premise that human emotions are connected to human needs, and therefore emotions have an innately adaptive potential that, if activated and worked through, can help people change problematic emotional states and interpersonal relationships. Emotion-focused therapy for individuals was originally known as process-experiential therapy, and it is still sometimes called by that name.
In psychology, constructivism refers to many schools of thought that, though extraordinarily different in their techniques, are all connected by a common critique of previous standard approaches, and by shared assumptions about the active constructive nature of human knowledge. In particular, the critique is aimed at the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality".
Memory consolidation is a category of processes that stabilize a memory trace after its initial acquisition. A memory trace is a change in the nervous system caused by memorizing something. Consolidation is distinguished into two specific processes. The first, synaptic consolidation, which is thought to correspond to late-phase long-term potentiation, occurs on a small scale in the synaptic connections and neural circuits within the first few hours after learning. The second process is systems consolidation, occurring on a much larger scale in the brain, rendering hippocampus-dependent memories independent of the hippocampus over a period of weeks to years. Recently, a third process has become the focus of research, reconsolidation, in which previously consolidated memories can be made labile again through reactivation of the memory trace.
Common factors theory, a theory guiding some research in clinical psychology and counseling psychology, proposes that different approaches and evidence-based practices in psychotherapy and counseling share common factors that account for much of the effectiveness of a psychological treatment. This is in contrast to the view that the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counseling is best explained by specific or unique factors that are suited to treatment of particular problems.
Schema therapy was developed by Jeffrey E. Young for use in treatment of personality disorders and chronic DSM Axis I disorders, such as when patients fail to respond or relapse after having been through other therapies. Schema therapy is an integrative psychotherapy combining theory and techniques from previously existing therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalytic object relations theory, attachment theory, and Gestalt therapy.
The management of traumatic memories is important when treating mental health disorders such as post traumatic stress disorder. Traumatic memories can cause life problems even to individuals who do not meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder. They result from traumatic experiences, including natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis; violent events such as kidnapping, terrorist attacks, war, domestic abuse and rape. Traumatic memories are naturally stressful in nature and emotionally overwhelm people's existing coping mechanisms.
A decisional balance sheet or decision balance sheet is a tabular method for representing the pros and cons of different choices and for helping someone decide what to do in a certain circumstance. It is often used in working with ambivalence in people who are engaged in behaviours that are harmful to their health, as part of psychological approaches such as those based on the transtheoretical model of change, and in certain circumstances in motivational interviewing.
Daniela Schiller is a neuroscientist who leads the Affective Neuroscience Lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is best known for her work on memory reconsolidation, and on modification of emotional learning and memory.
In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.
Vittorio Filippo Guidano was an Italian neuropsychiatrist, creator of the cognitive procedural systemic model and contributor to constructivist post-rationalist cognitive therapy. His cognitive post-rationalist model was influenced by attachment theory, evolutionary epistemology, complex systems theory, and the prevalence of abstract mental processes proposed by Friedrich Hayek. Guidano conceived the personal system as a self-organized entity, in constant development.
Diana Foșha is a Romanian-American psychologist, known for developing accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), and for her work on the psychotherapy of adults suffering the effects of childhood attachment trauma and abuse.
