Stacey Chernin

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Below the are definitions of the therapeutic treatment approaches for you to review and consider to assist you in deciding whether or not the described modalities can help resolve difficult circumstances that you would like to work on in therapy. Please take the time to look over the following detailed descriptions of the approaches to determine if they match your needs. You can also use them to understand how they offer the necessary strategies and techniques to help you reach your objectives and address your issues while thoroughly building a bridge between the conflict and resolution of your problems. These approaches are employed in individual, family, and couple sessions:

Psychodynamic therapy:

The emphasis of this therapy is finding connections between the present and past. The therapy provides a base to examine individual as well as the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. The structure of this kind of therapy is long term or short term conducted on a biweekly or weekly basis, according to your needs. This therapy can be done with an individual, family, or couple. The amount of members in the session depends on the client�s request or the presenting problem. The aim of the therapy is to increase the insight for individual, families, or couples, as well as develop healthy functioning, and build a better representation of self and others that results in healthy and mature interpersonal functioning. This model helps the person move toward their true self and reach a balance between intimacy and autonomous functioning. The strategies and techniques involved in psychodynamic are:

Interpreting symptoms
Addressing Resistances
Working through defenses
Connecting your past to the present
Emphasize a holistic understanding of the problem
Working with transferential issues

Cognitive behavioral therapy:

Here the focus is on the present, in which the therapeutic change highlights the client�s interpersonal functioning. The process of this kind of therapy is short-term and focuses on the individual, family, or couple present in the session. In this model, the aim is to increase the satisfaction and functioning of the individual, family, or couple. The focus addresses particular cognitive processes causing specific behaviors. This therapy helps the client to evaluate and restructure their belief system with an eye to one�s expectations in solving the relevant problem. The strategies and techniques applied in cognitive behavioral therapy include:

Relaxation
Cognitive restructuring
Social skills training
Improve reality testing
Reframing
Behavioral rehearsal
Modifying faulty core beliefs
Identify misperceptions
Exploring dysfunctional interpretations

Gestalt therapy:

The present is the focus here. Using a holistic model, it integrates interpersonal, affective, cognitive, sensory and behavioral factors. The therapeutic change occurs by guiding and encouraging the client to experiment with different behaviors in order to have a better understanding. The position of the therapist is to guide behavioral chance and growing awareness in the individual, family, or couple. Gestalt therapy discovers patterns of awareness and contact in the individual, family, or couple�s environment, including transpersonal, biological, interpersonal, intrapsychic, as well as any social variables experienced by the therapist and client. This model examines what the client expects. It fosters the creating of a clear figure from a ground perspective, gaining an understanding of the space in which an individual, family, or couple functions. The strategies and techniques involved are:

Improve accuracy of perceptions
Increasing awareness
Observation
Develop behavioral tools

Structural therapy:

The present is again the focus here. This type of therapy emphasizes the client�s context. Structural therapy utilizes organizational and spatial metaphors to articulate the problems and discover solutions. This model finds that family and couples problems are best understood with transactional patterns. This therapy recommends that for change to occur one or multiple individuals there needs to be a shift in the context embedded with the problems. The type of intervention in structural therapy helps to change dysfunctional patterns with the therapist being directive. The strategies and techniques employed in structural therapy include:

Emphasize reorganization
Enactment
Change transactional patterns
Improve boundary functioning
Tracking
Unbalancing

Strategic therapy:

This focuses on the present. This type of therapy works on eliminating maladaptive and undesired behaviors. The main focus of the therapy is to change specific facets of the system that preserves such problematic behaviors. This form of therapy utilizes therapeutic techniques to help the family or couple leave behind symptomatic behaviors, and to alter the interactional patterns leading to the problem. As a type of intervention, strategic therapy helps people to examine and evaluate their belief systems, in an effort to support them in establishing new choices. The strategies and techniques employed in this type of therapy include:

Encourage empowerment
Paradoxical intervention
Address power struggles
Circular questioning
Change dysfunctional interactive patterns
Assigning tasks