Clinical Psychology: Science, Practice, and Culture, Essay Example

From an individual psychology perspective, such as that of Adlerian therapy, presenting problems are viewed in terms of a holistic picture of the individual, as well as the individual’s interpersonal context (Corsini & Wedding, 2010, pp. 67-68). Context, in this case, may be seen as the social and psychological environment in which the behavior(s) manifest(s): context is the sum total of factors, influences, and features that affect or are affected by the individual, and with which the individual interacts. For individual psychology, the individual’s presenting problems and pathologies are comprehensible in terms of disappointments and setbacks suffered: they are adaptations, however poor they may be, to difficulties encountered in life (pp. 68-69). Arrogance and braggadocio, for example, may be overcompensations for feelings of weakness and inferiority (p. 69).

Systemic therapy, on the other hand, focuses on the interconnectedness between living systems, based on general systems theory, and the ability of such systems to maintain homeostasis through self-corrective mechanisms, an insight from cybernetic systems theory (Gehart, 2014, p. 137). Here, the emphasis is on interactions between individuals: while Adlerian therapy is also interpersonal, the systems-cybernetic approach focuses on systemic interactions to make sense of the whole, rather than on interpersonal interactions to make sense of the individual (pp. 137-138). In first-order cybernetics, the therapist is positioned as an outside observer who is trying to help the family discover an objective truth; in second-order cybernetics, wherein the therapist enters into a therapeutic system with the family and helps them find contextual truths (p. 138). Where individual therapy tends to endorse linear causality, events causing other events in a straightforward line, family therapy tends to endorse circular causality, reciprocal, interactional cycles of events influencing each other, an approach well suited to the complexities of the family (Pomerantz, 2008, p. 355).

References

Corsini, R., & Wedding, D. (2010). Current psychotherapies (9^th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Gehart, D. (2014). Mastering competencies in family therapy: A practical approach to theory and clinical case documentation (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Pomerantz, A. (2008). Clinical psychology: Science, practice, and culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.