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IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Brief therapy
BEFORE
1880s Psychodynamic
therapy, also known as insight-
oriented therapy, emerges.
It focuses on unconscious
processes as manifested in
a person’s present behavior.
1938 B.F. Skinner introduces
“radical” behaviorism, which
does not accept that thinking,
perception, or any other kind
of unobservable emotional
activity can trigger a particular
pattern of behavior.
AFTER
1958 American psychiatrist
Leopold Bellak sets up a brief
therapy clinic, where therapy
is limited to a maximum of
five sessions.
1974 US psychotherapist
Jay Haley publishes
Uncommon Therapy,
describing Milton Erickson’s
brief therapy techniques.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
See also: B.F. Skinner 78–85 ■ Elizabeth Loftus 202–07 ■ Milton Erickson 336P
sychotherapy often relies
heavily on patients gaining
an understanding of
themselves, their history, and their
behavior. This is based on the
belief that to counter emotional pain
and change behavior, we need to
understand where our emotional
patterns are rooted. Austrian-
American psychologist Paul
Watzlawick described this process
as “insight.” For example, a man
who grieves for an abnormally long
time after his partner leaves him
might come to realize that he has
deep issues with abandonment,
because his mother left him when
he was a child. But a number of
therapists have concluded that
insight may be unnecessary to
counter emotional pain, and some,
including Watzlawick, have claimed
that it can make a patient worse.
Watzlawick famously stated he
could not think of a single case in
which someone changed as a result
of a deepening understanding of self.
The belief that understanding past
events helps to shed light on present
problems is based on a “linear” viewof cause and effect. Watzlawick
was drawn to the idea of circular
causality of human behavior, which
shows people tend to return to the
same actions again and again.
Insight, Watzlawick suggested,
may even cause blindness, both to
the real problem and its potential
solution. He supported the brief
therapy approach, which targets
and tackles specific problems more
directly in order to achieve quicker
results. But he also felt that for any
therapy to succeed, it must offer the
patient a supportive relationship. ■INSIGHT MAY
CAUSE BLINDNESS
PAUL WATZLAWICK (1921–2007)
Anybody can be happy, but
to make oneself unhappy
needs to be learned.
Paul Watzlawick