Parallel process is a phenomenon noted in clinical supervision by therapist and supervisor, whereby the therapist recreates, or parallels, the client's problems by way of relating to the supervisor. The client's transference and the therapist's countertransference thus re-appear in the mirror of the therapist/supervisor relationship.
Attention to parallel process first emerged in the nineteen-fifties. The process was termed reflection by Harold Searles in 1955, [1] and two years later T. Hora (1957) first used the actual term parallel process – emphasising that it was rooted in an unconscious identification with the client/patient which could extend to tone of voice and behaviour. [2] The supervisor thus enacts the central problem of the therapy in the supervision, potentially opening up a process of containment and solution, first by the supervisor and then by the therapist. [3]
Alternatively, the supervisor's own countertransference may be activated in the parallel process, to be reflected in turn between supervisor and consultant, or back into the original patient/helper dyad. [4] Even then, however, careful examination of the material may still illuminate the original therapeutic difficulty, as reflected in the parallel situation. [5]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
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.
Countertransference, in psychotherapy, refers to a therapist's redirection of feelings towards a patient or becoming emotionally entangled with them. This concept is central to the understanding of therapeutic dynamics in psychotherapy.
Transference is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which repetitions of old feelings, attitudes, desires, or fantasies that someone displaces are subconsciously projected onto a here-and-now person. Traditionally, it had solely concerned feelings from a primary relationship during childhood.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are two categories of psychological therapies. Their main purpose is revealing the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension, which is inner conflict within the mind that was created in a situation of extreme stress or emotional hardship, often in the state of distress. The terms "psychoanalytic psychotherapy" and "psychodynamic psychotherapy" are often used interchangeably, but a distinction can be made in practice: though psychodynamic psychotherapy largely relies on psychoanalytical theory, it employs substantially shorter treatment periods than traditional psychoanalytical therapies. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is evidence-based; the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and its relationship to facts is disputed.
Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a form of short-term psychotherapy developed through empirical, video-recorded research by Habib Davanloo.
Projective identification is a term introduced by Melanie Klein and then widely adopted in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Projective identification may be used as a type of defense, a means of communicating, a primitive form of relationship, or a route to psychological change; used for ridding the self of unwanted parts or for controlling the other's body and mind.
In the psychology of defense mechanisms and self-control, acting out is the performance of an action considered bad or anti-social. In general usage, the action performed is destructive to self or to others. The term is used in this way in sexual addiction treatment, psychotherapy, criminology and parenting. In contrast, the opposite attitude or behaviour of bearing and managing the impulse to perform one's impulse is called acting in.
Harold Frederic Searles was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specializing in psychoanalytic treatments of schizophrenia. Searles had the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficult and borderline patients; and of being, in the words of Horacio Etchegoyen, president of the IPA, "not only a great analyst but also a sagacious observer and a creative and careful theoretician".
Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to the client's defence mechanisms that emerge from unconscious content coming to fruition through process. Resistance is the repression of unconscious drives from integration into conscious awareness.
Psychological resistance, also known as psychological resistance to change, is the phenomenon often encountered in clinical practice in which patients either directly or indirectly exhibit paradoxical opposing behaviors in presumably a clinically initiated push and pull of a change process. In other words, the concept of psychological resistance is that patients are likely to resist physician suggestions to change behavior or accept certain treatments regardless of whether that change will improve their condition. It impedes the development of authentic, reciprocally nurturing experiences in a clinical setting. Psychological resistance can manifest in various ways, such as denying the existence or severity of a problem, rationalizing or minimizing one's responsibility for it, rejecting or distrusting the therapist's or consultant's suggestions, withholding or distorting information, or sabotaging the treatment process. It is established that the common source of resistances and defenses is shame. This and similar negative attitudes may be the result of social stigmatization of a particular condition, such as psychological resistance towards insulin treatment of diabetes.
The therapeutic relationship refers to the relationship between a healthcare professional and a client or patient. It is the means by which a therapist and a client hope to engage with each other and effect beneficial change in the client.
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.
Glen Owens Gabbard is an American psychiatrist known for authoring professional teaching texts for the field. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and is also training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston.
Positive psychotherapy is a psychotherapeutic method developed by psychiatrist and psychotherapist Nossrat Peseschkian and his co-workers in Germany beginning in 1968. PPT is a form of humanistic psychodynamic psychotherapy and based on a positive conception of human nature. It is an integrative method that includes humanistic, systemic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral elements. As of 2014, there are centers and training available in twenty countries. It should not be confused with positive psychology.
The mainstay of management of borderline personality disorder is various forms of psychotherapy with medications being found to be of little use.
Body-centred countertransference involves a psychotherapist's experiencing the physical state of the patient in a clinical context. Also known as somatic countertransference, it can incorporate the therapist's gut feelings, as well as changes to breathing, to heart rate and to tension in muscles.
Joseph J. Sandler was a British psychoanalyst within the Anna Freud Grouping – now the Contemporary Freudians – of the British Psychoanalytical Society; and is perhaps best known for what has been called his 'silent revolution' in re-aligning the concepts of the object relations school within the framework of ego psychology.
Robert Joseph Langs was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst. He was the author, co-author, or editor of more than forty books on psychotherapy and human psychology. Over the course of more than fifty years, Langs developed a revised version of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, currently known as the "adaptive paradigm". This is a distinctive model of the mind, and particularly of the mind's unconscious component, significantly different from other forms of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy.
The core conflictual relationship theme, or CCRT, is an analytic tool developed in the late twentieth century by Lester Luborsky, as an aid both to brief psychotherapy in the psychodynamic tradition, and to researching its efficacy.
