Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.k5l52b>
Abstract
`titrebTowards a meta-theory of psychotherapy`/titreb The wide variety of psychotherapeutic methods and theories requires us to adopt an epistemological approach in our thinking, a “meta-theory” of psychotherapy. Whatever one’s initial profession, psychotherapy necessitates a training process that involves the therapist as a person : it is a form of treatment that targets the mind and is based on an intersubjective relationship. Psychotherapy makes use of various mediation components, involving to a variable degree the body, consciousness, the emotions and cognition in order to reach its goal : alleviating suffering and facilitating a better approach to life and its difficulties. It presupposes a belief in the psychological reality, distinct from and acting upon its neural counterpart ; biological and psychological methods of treatment are, therefore, complementary. In psychotherapy, the unexpected is always present – something that cannot be set down in a textbook, something that requires the therapist to have creative freedom and openness towards the patient’s culture. But no matter how strong the wish to remain open-minded, choices have to be made ; work-teams that combine various kinds of competence can be set up, but it is difficult to extend eclecticism to such a point that one becomes a “chameleon psychotherapist” or to integrate parapsychology and “psychedelics” in the smorgasbord.