Operational Values in Psychotherapy.

Abstract

The author presents the reader with a discussion of four methods of psychotherapy: Freud's psychoanalysis; Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry; Rank's dynamic relationship therapy, and Rogers' phenomenology, viewed in operational form. He contends that psychotherapy theories define the therapist's methods and define the personality structures as viewed by the therapist, have characteristic effects in determining the structure of the patient's process of change, and are important in evaluating the determinance of change. The arguments that the author uses are extremely clear and are exemplified by case vignettes. Each of the four main therapeutic techniques is compared with the others, and the operational and theoretical notions of each system are integrated so that the relationships of theory, operations, and the patient's experiences of change are adequately documented. This book is a welcome addition to the writings of persons dissatisfied with the all-embracing notions of specific schools of psychotherapy. There is clear evidence that