Collaborative Psychotherapy: Characteristics And Operation
The meeting between a therapist and the person seeking his help implies the confluence of two lives in the common enclave of the consultation, where an experience unfolds that holds within itself a transformative potential.
Traditionally, the therapist has been perceived as an expert who has the key to open the doors of others’ well-being, in such a way that the client will only have to adhere to what the client decides to “recommend” to ventilate the spaces vitiated by emotional pain.
What is really true, however, is that the client must become the key piece in the puzzle that is presented to him throughout the treatment, in such a way that his experience and point of view will be the basis on which it will be based. the whole process.
This is the idea of collaborative psychotherapy, an approach that moves away from the obsolete vision of the omnipotent and omniscient therapist to place emphasis on the direct protagonist of the experience: the client and the words that are shared with him.
Collaborative psychotherapy is a form of intervention proposed by Harlene Anderson and Harold Goolishan, which emerges directly from systemic paradigms and assumes constructivism as its base model. It provides an approach that views the person within the framework of the social influences provided by his or her direct environment, without which it is impossible to accurately approximate the way in which he acts and feels.
In this way, constructivism, which is based on the idea that Knowledge is formed from the individual experiences of each person, would extend to the social dimensions of the person. He would therefore understand it as the active and generative recipient of the entire complex system of beliefs, expectations, desires, traditions and taboos that are formed around the family and social unit; that in some way will influence his development as an individual, despite being susceptible to reflection and particular analysis. All of this has been accommodated under the general heading of “social constructivism.”
Mental disorders and other psychological problems would not be explained from the internal dynamics of the person, but from the way in which the person relates to the rest of the links that make up the mechanism of their environment, this being the one that will define the whole. of the mechanisms that initiate or maintain internal conflict over time. The interaction pattern therefore becomes the basic unit of analysis of collaborative psychotherapy, as an element constructed through the shared experiences of the group.
Although this form of intervention presents a scenario that is based on postmodern thinking and rethinks the level of authority of the therapist which is conceived as a collaborator (hence the nomenclature of the procedure) in the understanding of the family event, traditional strategies of psychological evaluation (such as interview or observation) are not denied or ignored, but rather they are reformulated with in order to adapt them to the epistemological (constructivist) substrate that characterizes it.
The language used in all cases (between the therapist and the client) is articulated in a colloquial register, which avoids technicalities and assimilates the information shared within the framework of an ordinary conversation. This reduces the verticality of the exchange and the professional is placed in a situation of total equality, avoiding value judgments and making public (for the client) the conclusions that he can reach throughout the process.
How the intervention and sessions work
From collaborative psychotherapy, an individual’s knowledge is understood through the way in which they exchange information in the social setting, while language becomes a symbolic entity through which they can explore reality and even transform everything they know. From this base, which arises from its systemic and constructionist foundation, emerges a form of therapy that makes use of open and sincere conversation through the simplest possible verbal code
In this conversation, the parties involved do not adopt positions of privilege, but come together with the common goal of sharing points of view on the same issue and promoting the entire process of reflection that this may give rise to, without necessarily having to reach an agreement. consensus. As new ways of seeing the problem are constructed, always in close collaboration between the therapist and his client, the shared product motivates new descriptions of it and the agents that could be involved.
In collaborative psychotherapy The therapist does not act in a directive manner, nor does he exhibit secrecy in his dissertations, but rather shares them with his client with extreme honesty and maintains an attitude of openness to the modification of his internal discourse on the issue. Everything arises from the principles of bidirectionality, making the client and their way of seeing the world the protagonist of the entire decision-making process.
This model, likewise, distances itself from drawing a psychopathological diagnosis, preferring in any case understand the other person’s unique experience without labels that encourage unnecessary generalization This perspective allows us to face the therapeutic situation with the nudity of someone who enters an unknown territory, discovering at every step the places that unfold in front of their vision.
From now on, and as a general synthesis, the elements to be taken into account will be shown from the prism of this form of psychotherapy and the position that whoever uses it must adopt.
Core items
These are the pillars of collaborative psychotherapy.
1. Joint research
Both the therapist and the client assume that the relationship that unites them is social in nature and is subject to the laws of reciprocity. That is why the research is chosen as a metaphorical format that describes the common advances that the two parties are facilitating, as the interactive process is shown to both. It is therefore essential that responsibilities are assumed and an attitude of frank interest in others and their daily lives is evident.
2. Relational balance
Collaborative psychotherapy escapes from the classic model, of biomedical origin, which formulated the implicit authority of the therapist in the choice of the contents to be addressed and in the rhythm at which these were incorporated into the interaction. In this case, a relationship of tacit balance is assumed, where knowledge is a kind of shared project in which the contribution of the therapist and the client has the same value and relevance.
3. Opening position
The therapist constantly reveals what he thinks about during the session, without sparing words or hiding conclusions, showing an attitude of necessary openness to the reaction that all this could generate in the client. It is also key that the encounter is experienced from the full acceptance of the narrative that the other displays since it is the privileged testimony of someone who experienced in first person the events that are being discussed.
4. Uncertainty
The therapist does not show preconceived ideas when entering therapy, but neither does it manage to formulate them as it progresses, since language itself is what defines the extent to which new meanings are acquired. This fact implies that the ultimate result of a session should not be anticipated, since the knowledge derived from it cannot be foreseen from the perspective of only one of the parties that form the relationship.
In addition to displaying a sort of tabula rasa on the matter to be discussed (position of the one who “does not know”), the therapist must use the simplest words possible when transmitting his or her part of the conversation. In any case, the most important thing is to avoid technical words or words whose degree of abstraction could interfere or hinder what really matters: the investigation undertaken with the client. It is necessary, therefore, to adopt a registry accessible to both parties.
6. Emphasis on the customer
The emphasis of the intervention must always be placed on the client. And this is the one who knows the most about the issues that are discussed throughout the therapy, considering himself the true expert on the subject For this reason, the therapist will direct attention and interest towards his individual experience, which will become the source of basic information in moments of uncertainty in which it is necessary to open a new horizon.
7. Emphasis on potential
Just as traditional biomedical practice has been aimed at evaluating, diagnosing and treating a condition (also in the clinical field of Psychology); constructivist models have preferably been concerned with identify and enhance the positive aspects that every human being harbors, even in circumstances of severe emotional difficulty. From this point of view, all the resources available to the person would be strengthened, and the construction of new ones would be encouraged.
8. Orientation to practice
Because the issues discussed in consultation revolve around real, everyday events in the client’s life, It is essential to provide a pragmatic and applied vision to the problems that arise On many occasions, all the effort will be aimed at resolving some interpersonal conflict, and it is essential to provide communication tools aimed at this end; while in other cases the issue to be discussed will be of an emotional and intimate nature.
