1979/01/01 by Anthony Ryle · 6 citations
Psychology · #Abstraction #Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics #Epistemology #Focus (optics) #Psychology #Psychotherapist #Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications #Snag #Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy
paper · doi:10.1192/bjp.134.1.46
openalex publication_date 1979/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
The need for a focus for brief interpretive psychotherapy is considered and a new approach is suggested. In this method, the ways in which the patient's construction of himself and his relationships are related to his problems are identified and expressed in the form of dilemmas, traps and snags. It is suggested that these formulations represent an appropriate level of abstraction, allowing patient and therapist to share provisional hypotheses about the goals of therapy and offering the basis for a method of measuring how far these goals are achieved.