Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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A psycho‐cultural history of psychotherapy in Africa
Get PDFThis paper is an attempt to construct a psycho‐cultural history of psychological therapies in Africa. It explores the origin, vision and direction, clinical and preventive goals and approaches, the philosophy and history, and issues of professional development and ethics, types of practitioners, and practice settings for psychotherapy in sub‐Saharan Africa, from the pre‐colonial period to the present. The central argument of the paper is that Psychotherapy in Africa should address not only the intrapsychic or interpersonal world of the clients but also phenomena that in traditional Western psychotherapy are not considered essential, namely, the socio‐cultural context. Overall, the principal objective is to share with our Western and Eastern partners the meaning and scope and the orientation and trends in Psychotherapy in Africa in the last 60 years; offering, in the same breadth, an X‐ray of the major issues and problems that confront our practice and the efforts we make to come to terms with these challenges. The expected outcome is the possibility and promise of successfully delineating, defining and establishing the field of Psychotherapy in Africa as a legitimate area of specialization for creative research and writings in the scientific study and clinical practice of modern psychology in Africa
Boundaries or mutuality in therapy: is mutuality really possible or is therapy doomed from the start?
Get PDFBoundaries or mutuality in therapy: is mutuality really possible or is therapy doomed from the start
Being white in the helping professions: developing effective intercultural awareness. By Judy Ryde. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2009; 219 pp
Get PDFBeing white in the helping professions: developing effective intercultural awareness. By Judy Ryde. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2009; 219 p
Cognitive analytic therapy: a sympathetic critique
Get PDFCognitive analytic therapy (CAT) is an increasingly popular form of time‐limited therapeutic intervention in the UK, which claims success with a variety of psychological problems such as depression, trauma, eating disorders, anxiety related disorders, borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. This paper begins by outlining the theoretical origins of CAT as well as its main conceptual tools. Cognitive analytic therapy has its roots in the synthesis of cognitive psychology, personal construct theory and psychoanalytic object relations. However, I would suggest what is most promising in CAT is the (relatively) recent import of Vygotskian and Bakhtinian ideas such as the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) and ‘dialogic interaction’. Further ideas from critical psychology/psychotherapy are used to interrogate some of the limitations of CAT. I will be asking if CAT is a genuine gain for the contemporary worker who has to deal with greater psychic tension than before under a crisis‐ridden capitalist regime. The paper ends with an assessment of CAT's future influence and the two principle trajectories available to it: ‘therapy as an expert system’ or ‘therapy as social critique’ (Totton, 2005, 86)
The problem that is research
Get PDFIn this paper the author considers the newly published book Practitioner‐based Research: Power, Discourse and Transformation in the context of the current research agenda in the psychological therapies. He questions the dominant research paradigm with its emphasis on quantitative and/or reductionist methodologies. He postulates that a different approach is needed to understand human suffering and mental health. He contextualizes psychological therapy in a social context and proposes that it is a political act where its focus is on empowerment and liberation
‘Psy’ research beyond late modernity: towards praxis‐congruent research
Get PDFLees and Freshwater's Practitioner‐based Research is a significant intervention into the struggle for the ‘research soul’ of the psychological therapies. Positivistic notions beloved of the managerialist ‘audit culture’, centred on the totem of ‘evidence‐based practice’, are increasingly colonizing psy research, creating a new ‘regime of truth’ that privileges ‘standards’, ‘competencies’ and ‘quality assurance’, and presages a shift in the locus of power away from practitioners' professional autonomy and towards managerialist bureaucracy. In arguing that no one (‘scientific’) paradigm should necessarily be assumed to be more ‘valid’ than a multiplicity of possible others, they advocate the practitioner's voice having at least equal validity to that of academics and bureaucrats, aiming to establish an ‘epistemology of practice’ that redresses a balance that has become too skewed towards uncritical, and in many ways anti‐human, ‘technical rationality’. This review article explores the rationale for this shift, and finds it compelling and convincing. It is also argued here that great benefit can be gained for the future flourishing of psy research from building bridges to other radical‐critical research traditions and innovations in late‐modern culture
Identity wars, the counselling and psychotherapy profession and practitioner‐based research
Get PDFThe counselling and psychotherapy profession has reached a watershed in its history. After a century of introspection and disputes between different theoretical orientations the profession is now facing outwards to the world. This is leading to a great deal of turmoil and upheaval. Instead of the theoretical disputes which typified the twentieth century the current disputes concern the relationship between the profession and society at large. Identity Wars have replaced the Paradigm Wars. These cover a range of practice‐orientated and research‐orientated issues. This article looks at the recently‐published book, Practitioner‐based Research: Power, Discourse and Transformation (Lees and Freshwater, 2008), from the point of view of these broader contextual developments. It discusses, amongst other things, the contribution of the book to these developments
Bridging the black hole of trauma: the evolutionary significance of the arts
Get PDFOne word for the Devil is ‘Diabolos’, the divider, the splitter‐into‐fragments. Healing likewise has always been associated with integration, integrity and becoming whole. From ncient times to the present, artistic performance in all its variety has been connected to healing of self and community and yet a recurrent question arises, ‘What are the arts for?’. A less than concrete answer to this question appears to justify reducing or eliminating funding to arts‐related programs whenever financial crisis occurs. This paper explores the evolutionary significance of trauma, dissociation, and the human brain and raises the possibility that the evolutionary selection of artistic performance is as a primary integrating mechanism for traumatized individuals and groups, without which human beings may not be able to fully heal
Protecting the client experience: A catastrophe theory map of civic accountability in the psychological therapies
Get PDFDrawing on catastrophe theory, it is proposed that the way in which practitioners balance self‐responsibility with external responsibility in the presence of coercion and threat explains a range of civic accountability behaviours in the psychological therapies, defined by levels of values congruence. If the level of coercion and threat is severe, for example from the state, practitioners are likely to congregate in two divergent groups where core values of the field are either honoured or compromised. So far as practitioners draw on their capability for emotional competence to hold coercion and threat minimized, the map points to a third civic accountability option that can balance external and self‐responsibility. The catastrophe theory map supports the premise that erosion of practitioners' values due to the coercion and threat that implementation of state regulation entails will harm the experience of psychological therapy clients