Collaborative psychotherapy: characteristics and operation

The encounter between a therapist and someone who seeks his help implies the confluence of two lives in the enclave consultation, where an experience unfolds that treasures within itself a potential transformer.

Traditionally, the therapist has been perceived as an expert who has the key to open the doors of the well-being of others, in a way such that the client will only have to adhere to what he decides to "recommend" to ventilate the spaces vitiated by pain emotional.

What is really true, however, is that the client must establish himself as the key piece in the puzzle that is presented to him through throughout the treatment, in such a way that his experience and point of view will be the basis on which the entire process will be based. process.

This is the idea of collaborative psychotherapy, an approach that moves away from the obsolete vision of the omnipotent and omniscient therapist, to emphasize the direct protagonist of the experience: the client and the words that are shared with him.

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Bases of collaborative psychotherapy

Collaborative psychotherapy is a form of intervention proposed by Harlene Anderson and Harold Goolishan, which emerges directly from systemic paradigms and assumes constructivism as its basic model. It supposes an approach that contemplates the person within the framework of the social influences that he provides the direct environment of him, without which it is impossible to accurately approximate the way he acts and feels.

In this way, constructivism, which starts from the idea that knowledge is formed from the individual experiences of each one, would extend to the social dimensions of the person. I would therefore understand it as the active and generative receiver of the entire complex system of beliefs, expectations, desires, traditions and taboos that are formed around the family and social unit; that in some way will influence his development as an individual, despite being susceptible to reflection and particular analysis. All this has been accommodated under the general heading of "social constructivism".

Mental disorders and other psychological problems would not be explained from the internal dynamics of the person, but from the way in which this is related to the rest of the links that make up the gear of his environment, this being the one that will define all the mechanisms that initiate or maintain the internal conflict throughout the time. The interaction pattern therefore becomes the basic unit of analysis of collaborative psychotherapy, as an element built through the shared experiences of the group.

Although this form of intervention poses a scenario that draws on postmodern thinking and rethinks the therapist's level of authority, which he conceives as a collaborator (hence the nomenclature of the procedure itself) in the understanding of the family fact, this does not mean that they deny or ignore the strategies traditional methods of psychological evaluation (such as the interview or observation), but are reformulated in order to adapt them to the epistemological (constructivist) substratum that characterizes.

The language used in all cases (between the therapist and the client) is articulated in a register colloquial, avoiding technicalities and assimilating the information shared in the context of a conversation ordinary. This reduces the verticality of the exchange and the professional is placed in a situation of total equality, avoiding value judgments and making public (for the client) the conclusions that can be reached throughout the process.

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Operation of the intervention and sessions

From collaborative psychotherapy, the knowledge of an individual is understood through the way in which information is exchanged in the scenario of what social, while language becomes a symbolic entity through which it can explore reality and even transform everything that he knows. From this base, which arises from its systemic and constructionist foundation, emerges a form of therapy that makes use of open and sincere conversation through the simplest possible verbal code.

In this conversation, the parties involved do not adopt privileged positions, but come together with the common goal of sharing points of view. point of view on the same matter and promote the entire process of reflection to which this may give rise, without necessarily having to reach an agreement. consensus. As the new ways of seeing the problem are built, always in close collaboration between the therapist and your client, the shared product motivates new descriptions of it and of the agents that might be involved. involved.

In collaborative psychotherapy the therapist does not act in a directive manner, nor does he exhibit secrecy in his dissertations, but rather shares them with his client from the extreme honesty and maintains an attitude of openness to the modification of his internal discourse on the matter. Everything arises from the principles of bidirectionality, making the client and his way of seeing the world the protagonist of the entire decision-making process.

This model also distances itself from making a psychopathological diagnosis, preferring in any case understand the unique experience of the other person without labels that encourage unnecessary generalization. This perspective makes it possible to face the therapeutic situation with the nakedness of someone who enters an unknown territory, discovering at each step the landscapes that unfold in front of her.

Hereinafter, and as a general synthesis, the elements to be taken into account from the prism of this form of psychotherapy and the position that whoever makes use of it must adopt will be shown.

Core items

These are the pillars of collaborative psychotherapy.

1. joint investigation

Both the therapist and the client assume that the relationship that unites them is of a social nature and is subject to the laws of reciprocity. That is why the research is chosen as a metaphorical format that describes the common advances that the two parties are facilitating, as the interactive process is shown to both. It is therefore fundamental that responsibilities are assumed and an attitude of frank interest in the other and in their daily life is shown.

2. relational balance

Collaborative psychotherapy flees from the classical model, of biomedical origin, which formulated the implicit authority of the therapist in the choice of content to be addressed and the pace at which it was incorporated into the interaction. In this case, a tacit equilibrium relationship is assumed, where knowledge is a kind of shared project in which the contribution of the therapist and the client have the same value and relevance.

3. opening position

The therapist constantly reveals what he thinks about during the session, sparing no words or watching conclusions, showing an attitude of necessary openness to the reaction that all this could generate in the customer. It is also key that the meeting be experienced from the full acceptance of the narrative that the other unfolds., since it is the privileged testimony of the person who experienced the events in question in the first person.

4. Uncertainty

The therapist shows no preconceived ideas when entering the therapy, but neither does he manage to formulate them as it progresses, since the language itself is the one that defines to what extent the new meanings are acquired. This fact implies that the ultimate result of a session should not be anticipated, since knowledge derived from it cannot be foreseen from the point of view of only one of the parties that make up the relationship.

5. colloquiality

In addition to displaying a kind of tabula rasa on the matter to be dealt with (position of the one who "does not know"), the therapist must use the simplest words possible when conveying the corresponding part of the conversation. In any case, the most important thing is to avoid technical words or words whose degree of abstraction could interfere or hinder what really matters: the investigation that is undertaken with the client. It is therefore necessary to adopt a register accessible to both parties.

6. Customer Emphasis

The accent of the intervention must always be placed on the client. And it is that this is the one who knows the most about the issues that are dealt with throughout the therapy, considering himself the true expert on the subject. For this reason, the therapist will direct attention and interest towards his individual experience, which will become the source of basic information in moments of uncertainty in which it is necessary to open a new horizon.

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7. Emphasis on potential

Like traditional biomedical practice, it has been oriented towards evaluating, diagnosing and treating a condition (also in the clinical field of Psychology); constructivist models have been concerned preferably with identify and enhance the positive aspects that every human being harbors, even in circumstances of severe emotional difficulty. From this point of view, all the resources available to the person would be strengthened, and the construction of new ones would be encouraged.

8. Practice Orientation

Because the issues dealt with in consultation revolve around daily and real events in the client's life, It is essential to provide a pragmatic and applied vision to the problems that arise. On many occasions all the effort will be oriented to the resolution of some interpersonal conflict, being essential to provide communication tools aimed at this purpose; while in other cases the matter to be dealt with will be of an emotional and intimate nature.

Bibliographic references:

• Agudelo, M.E. and Estrada, P. (2013). Narrative and Collaborative Therapies: a Look through the Lens of Social Constructivism. Magazine of the Faculty of Social Work, 29(9), 15-48.
• Ibarra, A. (2004). What is collaborative psychotherapy? Athenea Digital: Journal of Thought and Social Research, 1(5), 1-8.