Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [394]
Transactional analysis: TA was in vogue in the 1960s and is the only recognized psychotherapy to have been the subject of two books on the national best-seller list for over a year (Eric Berne’s Games People Play and Thomas A. Harris’s I’m Okay—You’re Okay). TA is based on dynamic principles, is concerned with interpersonal behavior, and deals with neurotic problems on a “rational” basis—not, however, through reasoning, like RET and cognitive therapy. It works through the therapist’s interpretations of which of three ego states are responsible for a particular behavior by the patient.
These ego states or selves are the ways in which the patient acts in his or her “transactions.” In any given transaction—the basic unit of social interaction—each person behaves toward another either as Child (the child self, largely emotional, that remains embedded within each of us), Parent (the set of precepts and beliefs—the “shoulds” and “should nots”—we internalized from our childhood perceptions of our parents), or Adult (the cognitive self, the mature and rational ego).
Although the three ego states are based on unconscious feelings, in TA the therapist deals with them on a conscious level, pointing out the ways in which the patient and the people he or she is dealing with are either communicating successfully or engaging in “crossed transactions.” The therapist also spells out the many “games”—fraudulent or ulterior transactions that conceal the real meaning of the interaction— they play in their inappropriate roles. Patients learn to recognize which self they are being in their transactions with others (and with the therapist), and which the others are being with them. Under the therapist’s guidance, they learn to utilize their Child for fun but have their Adult in charge of their serious behavior.104 Today, TA is one of many special techniques used occasionally by some therapists.
Interpersonal psychotherapy: This short-term insight-oriented (psycho-dynamic) therapy has proven particularly useful in treating depression. It focuses on the client’s current relationships with peers and family members and aims to discover how what happens in them is connected to the client’s mood; its goal is to improve the way those relationships work on the assumption that this will improve the client’s emotional state. The therapist helps the client think about the consequences of how he or she behaves in those relationships, alter those actions, improve communication and openness with the others, and thus modify the relationships in a beneficial fashion, all toward the end of relieving the client’s symptoms.105
Group, couples, and family therapy: These are not specific therapeutic techniques but “modalities”; a modality is a type of therapy classified by the unit of treatment (individual, couple, family, group).
Group therapy: At least a hundred varieties exist or have existed; new ones appear every year, but many soon die out.
In the 1960s and 1970s, in keeping with the spirit of the times and the idealization of communes, “encounter groups” flourished and the group milieu was seen in humanistic circles as more therapeutic than one-on-one therapy. Later, the general view came to be that group therapy is useful primarily for interpersonal and social problems, although it does also address internal ones; members of a group provide one another with support and empathy as well as with feedback on how the social self each presents is perceived and which aspects of it are welcomed and which not.106
Group activities can range from discussion of one another’s problems and self-revelation to role playing, and from group support of a grieving or troubled member to group attack of a member whose behavior is objectionable. In most groups the therapist steers interactions