Assimilative integration: Short-term dynamic psychotherapy for treating affect phobias.

Abstract

An integrative model of short-term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP) is presented that assimilates interventions from a variety of therapy orientations to accelerate patient improvement. Affect phobia therapy (APT) is a name given to McCullough's STDP to highlight the main treatment focus and to guide therapists to the most efficient and effective interventions. This treatment model is based on the hypothesis that conflicts about feelings, or “affect phobias,” are the fundamental issues underlying many Axis I and Axis II disorders. Systematic desensitization, or stepwise exposure to feelings and defense response prevention, is hypothesized to be the fundamental agent of therapeutic change. APT focuses primarily on the resolution of affective conflicts in a psychodynamic framework, but videotape review and process studies of this STDP model have discovered that interventions from cognitive, behavior, Cestalt, and experiential therapy, as well as self-psychology, have been instrumental in patient change. Therapy is made briefer by clarifying treatment objectives, simplifying the selection criteria, and using principles of systematic desensitization for the resolution of affect phobias.