Journal of Psychotherapy Integration This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

The cracks where the light gets in: Exploring therapist transformation following the loss of a family member to suicide.
Limited research has addressed the impact of personal loss on psychotherapists’ practice and professional identities. The goal of this article is to share a first-person account of my experience after losing a family member to suicide, focusing particularly on ways in which this loss impacted my professional identity and practice as a psychotherapist. Three primary themes are discussed, including (a) the challenges of integrating this personal experience into my professional identity; (b) my enhanced awareness of traditional masculine gender roles in psychotherapy; and (c) processes related to the experience of self-comp...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

When your graduation gift is cancer: The making of a psychotherapist.
The purpose of this article is to share the lessons learned from two life threatening illnesses I experienced just before and just after becoming a practicing psychotherapist. These experiences profoundly transformed my personal and professional trajectories. I will describe the details of my experience and then share the lessons and transformations that I continue to reap since being diagnosed. It is my hope that clinicians, supervisors, and professors might glean insights from my experience of serious illness as a graduate student and early career psychologist as to how they might support their colleagues, students, and ...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Challenges and growth through bereavement during graduate training.
In this paper, two psychotherapy trainees who lost a parental figure to cancer during graduate training discuss this shared experience. We explore the literature on bereavement and how loss has been tied to psychotherapist growth while interweaving the ways in which the literature coincides with our experience. Within this exploration, we center our experience around the wounded healer literature. We also highlight areas of growth and challenge and narrow in on what others may take away from our lived experience. Specifically, we discuss cultural values in the context of bereavement, bridging the personal and professional ...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The transformative process of the bereaved therapist.
This article explores the experience of the bereaved therapist in an attempt to understand what it is like to be a psychotherapist following personal loss and how the transformation of “becoming” the bereaved therapist unfolds. It is a reflective first-person account of the author’s experience of personal loss set within the context of other bereaved therapists’ stories and against the backdrop of relevant literature. The author uses her story along with the shared reflections of others to discuss the complex interplay in the dynamic processes involved in the intrapsychic and intersubjective world of the bereaved t...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Survivor–therapists and sexual-assailant–clients: A unified approach to sexual communication skills building and assault prevention.
This article will discuss the transformation of one therapist, a survivor, working with a young man, who in the course of treatment, was accused of rape. The hope is that this article will reach other survivors working as mental health professionals, and supervisors supporting those therapists, to illuminate what to do when personal trauma interacts with tertiary trauma in the context of a nonjudgmental therapeutic relationship. This article has been written from the perspective of the therapist (and doctoral trainee), with input from the supervisor who consulted on the case. It is our hope that others will be able to lear...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Thrownness: One practitioner’s experience of an unexpected disaster.
Providing interventions during times of disaster profoundly impacts clinical practitioners. The impact is often unknown until well after the disaster has ended. It is harder when there is an expectation of what will be done and then something much different is asked. Every new interaction in a disaster is an opportunity to learn and grow for the next. It is imperative that every mental health practitioner willing to provide help during a disaster remain in a position to know their limits, particularly in knowledge. Experience and education help the practitioner change, growing for those who need help during times of crisis...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Traumatic pet loss and the integration of attachment-based animal assisted therapy.
The sudden death of my Labrador Retriever was traumatic and extremely difficult to process. Despite previous experience in grief counseling, I was intellectually but not emotionally prepared for my own pet loss. In order to process my grief, I began to explore my own childhood and the nature of the attachment between my dog and me. Reflecting on different schools of psychology, including self-psychology and attachment theory, I discovered that selfobject needs contribute significantly to the development of an attachment bond and attachment anxiety. Animals are extremely helpful in repairing disrupted or damaged attachments...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Impacts of challenging life experiences on professional development in graduate trainees.
Graduate training in psychotherapy can be an exciting but challenging time in terms of both personal and professional development. This developmental trajectory can be significantly altered by challenging life experiences. The impacts of such experiences on professional development in psychotherapy trainees is not often discussed in the literature. Through this article, we hope to generate a much-needed conversation about the experiences of graduate trainees who encounter challenging life experiences, and the importance of supervision in facilitating professional and personal growth. To do this, we present vignettes inspir...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Building a culture of caring: Lessons learned from managing professional expectations while navigating the emotional upheaval of divorce.
Navigating the intersections between personal and professional identities can be a challenge throughout one’s professional development but especially during challenging life transitions such as divorce. We share two stories highlighting our own experiences navigating this particular hurdle, as well as the distress with which we struggled that was difficult to admit in a professional setting. Discussed are ethical implications for handling impairment in competence in self or colleagues, as well as a strengths-based framework to encourage psychologists to focus on aspects of well-functioning as a matter of practice. Well-f...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Reproductive traumas as a catalyst for clinician transformation.
This article speaks to the necessary changes that occurred as a result of a particular therapist’s journey to parenthood. It includes how her orientation to practice shifted and traces the role that these personal journeys can have on the therapeutic relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration)
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

My journey through psychotherapy integration by twists and turns.
In this article, I describe my evolving engagement with the field of psychotherapy integration over a period of 40 years. It started with a consideration of the limits of integration based on the very different perspectives on, and visions of, reality in three major forms of therapy—psychoanalytic, behavioral, and humanistic. My journey took a turn toward an integrative position as I noted how behavioral and psychodynamic outlooks began moving closer together. This led to my formulating the concept of assimilative integration, in which techniques or perspectives from other therapies are incorporated into a “home” the...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Integrating psychotherapy with the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology (HiTOP).
In this article, we present the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology (HiTOP), an evidence-based alternative to the categorical approach to diagnostic classification that has considerable promise for integrative psychotherapy research and practice. We first review issues associated with the categorical approach that may have constrained advances in psychotherapy. We next describe how the HiTOP model addresses some of these issues. We then offer suggestions regarding potentially mutual benefits of integrating HiTOP with treatment principles from the common factors literature as well as the cognitive-behavioral and relati...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - April 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Quasi-experimental N = 1 evaluation of the effectiveness of cognitive analytic therapy for dependent personality disorder.
This study therefore employed an A/B with extended follow-up quasi-Experimental single case design with a female patient meeting diagnostic criteria for DPD, treated with cognitive analytic therapy (CAT). The patient was treated with the 24-session version of the model, with 6 months structured follow-up. Fidelity to the treatment model was found to be satisfactory. There was a significant effect of phase of study in the time series of the primary idiographic measure of reassurance-seeking. On the primary nomothetic measure (i.e., the Interpersonal Dependency Inventory), there was a reliable improvement to self-confidence ...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - April 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Individualizing psychotherapy research designs.
The present paper discusses perspectives on how psychotherapy research may move toward individualizing its designs, in the context of a postmodern definition of pluralism of approaches. Based on the overarching purposes of psychotherapy research, I discuss the role of case formulation as a central tool for increasing clinical utility and precision of research conclusions. A historic account of the use of case formulation in research is completed by an updated empirical account on what we know on the effects, the validation and the components of effective case formulations in psychotherapy, and the articulation of specific ...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - March 28, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

A smorgasbord of PTSD treatments: What does this say about integration?
In this special section of the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration a variety of treatments for PTSD, including prolonged exposure, EMDR, interpersonal therapy, memory specific training, schema therapy, and narrative-emotion process therapy, were described. In this comment, two issues were discussed (a) psychotherapy integration, and (b) mechanisms of change and treatment effectiveness. A case is made that all the treatments for PTSD are integrative, whether or not this is explicit in their presentation. It is noted that all treatments for PTSD are approximately equally effective and that the evidence for the mechanisms of...
Source: Journal of Psychotherapy Integration - March 4, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research