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Crofton Health Clinic - 88 Crofton Lane, Orpington, Kent, BR5 1HD

Crofton Health Clinic

88 Crofton Lane, Orpington, Kent, BR5 1HD

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Interptetive Therapy

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The three principles of interpretive psychotherapy are based upon;

  • Behaviour is prompted chiefly by emotional considerations, but insight and understanding are necessary to modify and control such behaviour and the aims underlying it.
  • A very significant proportion of human emotion, together with the action to which it leads, is not normally accessible to personal introspection being rooted in areas of the mind which are beneath the surface of consciousness.

It follows logically that any process which makes available to individual consciousness, the true significance of emotional conflicts and tensions, hitherto repressed; will thereby produce both heightened awareness and increased stability and emotional control.

Insight therapy may prove to be less comfortable for the client, because the client;

  • has to accept from the outset a larger share of the responsibility for the success of the treatment.
  • Has to experience to a greater degree the painful effect of examining his own emotional tender spots.

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Brief methods of therapy depend for their brevity upon the reduction of two main elements which are:

  • the repetition involve in working through problems against resistance, whilst relying on the clients free associations to bring these problems back into the field of exploration every time they are evaded or shelved.
  • The time and effort consumed in dealing with comparatively irrelevant material and in coming to the point in material which is unquestionably important but too emotionally charged to be readily handled by the client.

The essence of all methods of brief psychotherapy is in some way to select those areas of a clients life which are most relevant to the problem he faces and the symptoms he displays. Having selected them, to focus the entire procedure upon them until they have been dealt with, the necessary changes thereby effected in the emotional life of the client.

In brief interpretive therapy the initial interviews should consist essentially, in the acceptance by the therapist of the clients need to communicate and be understood. What the therapist permits the client to tell him in the early interviews is likely to be decisive in the success or failure of this form of treatment.

All methods of brief psychotherapy have in common the paring down of the analytical procedure to deal exclusively with the immediate or essentially alterable sources of complaint.

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