Occupational Therapists (OTs) are health care professionals specializing in occupational therapy and occupational science. OTs and occupational therapy assistants (OTAs) use scientific bases, and a holistic perspective to promote a person's ability to fulfill their daily routines and roles. OTs have immense training in the physical, psychological, and social aspects of human functioning deriving from an education grounded in anatomical and physiological concepts, and psychological perspectives. They enable individuals across the lifespan by optimizing their abilities to perform activities that are meaningful to them ("occupations"). Human occupations include activities of daily living, work/ vocation, play, education, leisure, rest and sleep, and social participation.
Music therapy, an allied health profession, "is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program."
Counseling psychology is a psychological specialty that encompasses research and applied work in several broad domains: counseling process and outcome; supervision and training; career development and counseling; and prevention and health. Some unifying themes among counseling psychologists include a focus on assets and strengths, person–environment interactions, educational and career development, brief interactions, and a focus on intact personalities.
Dance/movement therapy (DMT) in USA/ Australia or dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) in the UK is the psychotherapeutic use of movement and dance to support intellectual, emotional, and motor functions of the body. As a modality of the creative arts therapies, DMT looks at the correlation between movement and emotion.
Bartenieff Fundamentals are a set of principles for "corrective body movement" developed by Irmgard Bartenieff, who studied with Rudolf Laban and colleagues in Germany (1925). After coming to the United States in the 1940s and becoming a physical therapist, Bartenieff developed the method in the form of a set of exercises, based on concepts and principles of kinesiological functioning, that can be extended into all types of movement possibilities. Bartenieff in developing this work fused her studies in both Laban movement analysis with Physiotherapeutic principles and the influence of both is a strong component of the Fundamentals.
Object relations theory in psychoanalytic psychology is the process of developing a psyche in relation to others in the childhood environment. It designates theories or aspects of theories that are concerned with the exploration of relationships between real and external people as well as internal images and the relations found in them. It maintains that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of its personality in adult life. Particularly, the need for attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self or the psychic organization that creates the sense of identity.
Transference is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the feelings a person had about their parents, as one example, are unconsciously redirected or transferred to the present situation. It usually concerns feelings from a primary relationship during childhood. At times, this transference can be considered inappropriate. Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who considered it an important part of psychoanalytic treatment.
Cantometrics is a method developed by Alan Lomax and a team of researchers for relating elements of the world's traditional vocal music to features of social organization as defined via George Murdock's Human Relations Area Files, resulting in a taxonomy of expressive human communications style. Lomax defined Cantometrics as the study of singing as normative expressive behavior and maintained that Cantometrics reveals folk performance style to be a "systems-maintaining framework" which models key patterns of co-action in everyday life. His work on Cantometrics gave rise to further comparative studies of aspects of human communication in relation to culture, including: Choreometrics, Parlametrics, Phonotactics, and Minutage.
Dyadic developmental psychotherapy is a psychotherapeutic treatment method for families that have children with symptoms of emotional disorders, including complex trauma and disorders of attachment. It was originally developed by Daniel Hughes as an intervention for children whose emotional distress resulted from earlier separation from familiar caregivers. Hughes cites attachment theory and particularly the work of John Bowlby as theoretical motivations for dyadic developmental psychotherapy.
Antioch University New England is a private graduate school located in Keene, New Hampshire, United States. It is part of the Antioch University system, a private, non-profit, 501(c)3 institution, that includes campuses in Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; Santa Barbara, California; and Yellow Springs, Ohio. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. The most well-known campus was Antioch College, which is now independent of the Antioch University system.
Child psychotherapy, or mental health interventions for children have developed varied approaches over the last century. Two distinct historic pathways can be identified for present-day provision in Western Europe and in the United States: one through the Child Guidance Movement, the other stemming from Adult psychiatry or Psychological Medicine, which evolved a separate Child psychiatry specialism.
Transference focused psychotherapy (TFP) is a highly structured, twice-weekly modified psychodynamic treatment based on Otto F. Kernberg's object relations model of borderline personality disorder. It views the individual with borderline personality organization (BPO) as holding unreconciled and contradictory internalized representations of self and significant others that are affectively charged. The defense against these contradictory internalized object relations leads to disturbed relationships with others and with self. The distorted perceptions of self, others, and associated affects are the focus of treatment as they emerge in the relationship with the therapist (transference). The treatment focuses on the integration of split off parts of self and object representations, and the consistent interpretation of these distorted perceptions is considered the mechanism of change.
Attachment-based therapy applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, originated by John Bowlby. These range from individual therapeutic approaches to public health programs to interventions specifically designed for foster carers. Although attachment theory has become a major scientific theory of socioemotional development with one of the broadest, deepest research lines in modern psychology, attachment theory has, until recently, been less clinically applied than theories with far less empirical support. This may be partly due to lack of attention paid to clinical application by Bowlby himself and partly due to broader meanings of the word 'attachment' used amongst practitioners. It may also be partly due to the mistaken association of attachment theory with the pseudo-scientific interventions misleadingly known as attachment therapy. The approaches set out below are examples of recent clinical applications of attachment theory by mainstream attachment theorists and clinicians and are aimed at infants or children who have developed or are at risk of developing less desirable, insecure attachment styles or an attachment disorder.
Warren Lamb was a British management consultant and pioneer in the field of nonverbal behavior. After studying with Rudolf Laban he developed Movement Pattern Analysis - a system for analysing and interpreting movement behaviour, which has been applied in numerous fields including management consulting, executive recruitment and therapy. Lamb used the MPA system in advising multinational corporations, typically at top team level, and also government organizations. Lamb differentiated his system from the popular body language literature and argued that the key to interpreting behaviour was not fixed gestures but the dynamics of movement. Lamb's underlying theory was that each individual has a unique way of moving which is constant and that these distinct movement patterns reflect the individual's way of thinking and behaving. In MPA he developed a system for identifying these patterns and relating them to behaviours, with the aim of predicting how people will behave in various situations based on their movement patterns. Recent studies led by Harvard University and Brown University in the United States reported significant predictive reliability for the system.
Movement pattern analysis (MPA) is a system for assessing an individual's motivations in decision-making processes, based on the analysis of nonverbal behaviour. MPA applications include management consulting and career guidance, and over 30,000 individuals – primarily those involved in senior management – have made use of MPA profiles over the last 50 years.
Sensory art therapy is a type of treatment that uses all kinds of art to explore emotions, resolve psychological conflicts, reduce anxiety, as well as decrease physical pain. The creative and nonconventional process of sensory art therapy often elicits better results for individuals who suffer from chronic stress, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as those who have been diagnosed with learning/development disabilities.
Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.
The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) in New York was founded in 1978 as a center for the development and study of the principles of Laban Movement Analysis, formulated by Rudolf Laban and further developed by his student and colleague Irmgard Bartenieff. The institute maintains a library and media resource center that includes published and unpublished text, films and photographs on the subject of Laban Movement Analysis.
Irmgard Bartenieff was a dance theorist, dancer, choreographer, physical therapist, and a leading pioneer of dance therapy. A student of Rudolf Laban, she pursued cross-cultural dance analysis, and generated a new vision of possibilities for human movement and movement training. From her experiences applying Laban’s concepts of dynamism, three-dimensional movement and mobilization to the rehabilitation of people affected by polio in the 1940s, she went on to develop her own set of movement methods and exercises, known as Bartenieff Fundamentals.
Judith Ida Kestenberg was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children (ISOPC) an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. She was also the lead creator of the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP), used to create a psychological profile based exclusively on movement patterns.
