The Objectives And Goals Of Psychotherapy In A General Sense

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Today we will talk about general and global goals and objectives of therapy and consider each specific task separately.

If we talk about therapy in general, it is a symbolization and verbalization of emotional and bodily experiences of a person. Accordingly, the basic task of psychotherapy is to teach the client to describe in words his difficulties and his experiences. This can be called the foundation for a specialist to continue to work with a client.

I would like to cite a quote that well describes the purpose of psychotherapy and many of the points that we get from psychology.

It is taken from the book Dreams of Eden by James Hollis. He quoted a quote from Fred Hann in his book. This quote most fully and honestly reveals the goal of psychotherapy: “The goal of psychotherapy is to help the patient go beyond rational explanations and other methods of resistance to a level that allows him to independently move along the unknown path in order to seek, and, suffering and torment, in the end, become fully aware of his condition and discover that he can survive. That life can actually be both absurd and changeable, that man is not omnipotent.

That in the absence of magic, sometimes such pain appears as a last defense that cannot be described in words and that, having experienced suffering and grief, not only for the lost objects of their fantasies, but also for the fantasies and illusions themselves, live without illusions. To find out that time is both friend and foe at the same time. To admit that happiness is not a state, but an ephemeral and very valuable feeling. That if a person lives without illusions, he must give meaning to his life. That hope should replace expectations and demands, that activity should replace passivity. That a realistic hope should be directed towards personal development and growth, and that means a deeper feeling of both joy and sadness. That the gates to that Garden of Eden are closed for him forever and are guarded by angels with sharp swords. That his mother died forever, forever, forever."

Perhaps this is the most capacious and honest description of psychotherapy. It goes without saying that when it comes to angels and mother - this is a metaphor. You should not literally take the fact that only people who have stopped believing in God or those who have lost a loved one come to psychotherapy. It says that a person no longer has anyone to rely on, and only he bears responsibility for himself, only he makes a choice in his life, and no one except himself will help him.

If you are an adult mature person, then you know that no one will save you, you yourself in this life and existentially live yourself. You can defend yourself by falling into a codependent relationship or a merging relationship, but that doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to your life.

So, the main task and goal of psychotherapy is to improve the client's quality of life and his sense of self through greater awareness and depth of self-understanding, dialogue with oneself.

What tasks can be used to achieve this goal?

First of all, you need to establish trust with the client. And then the elaboration of protective mechanisms, such as projection, introjection, retroflection, can proceed. These are types of contact interruption mechanisms.

There is denial, repression, introjection, projective identification, self-identification with another person. There are many different defense mechanisms, which we will get acquainted with a little later.

Accordingly, we work with the client with resistance.

When resistance appears, it manifests itself through defense mechanisms. It is especially important to work through all the same projections, introjections, repression, denial: “No, everything is fine with me,” although a person feels that something is wrong in his soul. People very often use such methods of protection.

Therefore, the task of psychotherapy is to go through these defenses and get to the depths of the soul, to the human psyche, in order to end the unfinished crises of childhood. As you know, in the period from birth to seven years, the foundations of the child's psyche are laid. Crises that arise on the basis of trust, merger and separation are especially important. One of the main tasks of psychotherapy is to work and work through such moments.