Brief Therapy with a Postpartum Depressive: Integrating Cognitive–Behavior and Thought Field Therapies within a Spiritual Framework

Abstract

This case study describes a rather brief course of therapy with a 30-year-old woman who became clinically depressed after the birth of her child. A unique element of this presentation is that the client describes what happened to her before and during a variety of treatments, including four hospitalizations and an array of medications that iatrogenically produced seizures, prior to our therapeutic work. Proceeding the client's subjective account, I describe my clinical framework—a brief, integrative, solution-focused, client-directed therapy approach, emphasizing the integration of cognitive-behavioral and thought field therapies (Callahan, 1995)—undertaken within the context of a constructivist/spiritual metatheory. A session-by-session description of the implementation of this approach and its effects follows the client's description of her experiences. The paper concludes with the client's remarks about this therapy and its impact, followed by my own observations about treatment, including prospects for bridging Western psychology and spiritual practice with such Eastern traditions as Yoga and Buddhism.