Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy: what is it and how does it help us?
Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy is a type of therapy developed in the 1990s by the Italian neuropsychiatrist Vittorio Guidano.. It is framed within a constructivist perspective, which understands that we are building reality in a unique and personal way.
Thus, there would be as many realities as people. This therapy also gives great importance to personal identity and language. In this article we will know the general characteristics of him, as well as Guidano's ideas and some of the techniques that he uses through his model.
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Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy: characteristics
Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy was created by Vittorio Guidano throughout his life; approximately, from the 70s to the year 1994. It is considered a type of cognitive but also constructivist therapy, in which the therapeutic relationship is understood as "from expert to expert". His main objective is for the person to be able to build their own identity through different strategies that we will see below..
This type of therapy It is used as a psychological clinical intervention, and in turn constitutes a theoretical school in psychology. This school follows a theoretical model that defends that the human being tries to create a certain continuity in the sense of himself and his personal history, through a coherent narrative identity and flexible. Said identity can be seen reflected in narrative elaborations that the patient develops.
The ideas of Vittorio Guidano
Vittorio Guidano was born in Rome in 1944, and died at the age of 55 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a renowned neuropsychiatrist, and in addition to creating Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy, he also created the Systemic Processional Cognitive Model.. Thus, his theoretical orientation was fundamentally cognitive and constructivist. However, unlike the preceding cognitivism, in Guidano's theory the same author praises emotions over cognition.
It is worth mentioning, however, that the current of post-rationalism begins at the hands of V. Guidano together with his partner Giovanni Liotti, who in 1983 published the book "Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders". But what does postrationalism mean?
This current, created by Guidano, and where Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy is located, tries to go beyond the external, real and rational world. Thus, this current of constructivist type, starts from the idea that knowledge is created through interpretation of reality, and a series of subjective aspects in the processing of information and the world that surrounds us
levels
In Guidano's Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy two levels are proposed in which all human experience develops. The objective of this therapy, as well as of the therapist, will be to work between these two levels (which involve the experience and the explanation of the experience).
These levels “exist” or operate simultaneously, and are the following:
1. First level
The first level consists of the immediate experience that we experience, and which is made up of a set of emotions, behaviors and sensations that flow unconsciously.
2. Second level
The second level of the human experience consists of the explanation that we give to the immediate experience; that is, how do we order, understand and conceive said reality?
Self-observation
On the other hand, Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy promotes a very specific method of work, which focuses on self-observation by the patient. Self-observation is a technique that allows a person to "see themselves from the outside" and reflect on their behavior, their thoughts and their attitudes.
Besides, this technique also allows discriminating two dimensions of oneself: on the one hand, the "I as an immediate experience", and on the other, the "me", which is the explanation that the person develops about himself through language.
In addition, self-observation, a central strategy of Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy, allows the person to explore his own experience, as well as construct alternative meanings to understand and name what is feeling.
The meanings that the person constructs in relation to their reality and their vital experience arise as a result of the person "ordering" their reality in a certain way. On the other hand, it will be convenient for her to feel reality as something continuous that is happening to her, in coherence with herself.
The self: personal identity
Thus, in relation to the above and to the self-observation process, we found that V. Guidano in his Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy attaches great importance to personal identity (the goal of therapy), which is the same as the concept of the “self”, and which is understood as a system complex cognitive-affective, which allows the person to evaluate (and re-evaluate) their experience globally or partial.
All this is done by the patient according to an image that he has of himself (a conscious image), which he assimilates through language and experiences.
Relationship with levels
We can relate the concept of oneself (the self) with the levels of human experience, previously commented. Thus, at the first level of immediate experience, one would find the concrete situations that the person experiences and lives with an internal sense of continuity. All this, as we have already seen, is experienced automatically and not consciously.
As for the second level, instead (the level of explanation), we find the explanation that we give to the experience and to the image that we have of ourselves. This image is built by the person throughout his life. The therapy will also focus on making it coherent with the person's values and consistent over time (so that the patient can form a vital "continuum").
Moviola Technique
On the other hand, self-observation is developed through another technique that is within the self-observation process itself: the Moviola Technique.
The name of the technique alludes to the first machine that allowed editing films on film (moviola), and is explained through a metaphor with this object. But how is the moviola technique applied?
Steps
Let's see how it is applied through each of its steps:
1. Panoramic vision
First, the patient is trained to learn to divide a particular experience into a sequence of scenes, thus obtaining a kind of panoramic view.
2. Reduction
Subsequently, they are helped to enrich each scene with details and with various sensory and emotional aspects.
3. Amplification
Finally, the patient must reinsert the scene (or scenes), already enriched (s), in the sequence of her life history. In this way, when the patient sees himself, both from a subjective and an objective point of view, may begin to build new abstractions and alternative ideas about himself and his experience vital.
Structuring the emotional experience
Finally, another component of Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy is the structuring of emotional experience. To structure everything that we are experiencing, the use of language will be essential. This will allow us to order the experience and structure it into sequences, as we have already seen in the moviola technique.
In addition, it will also help us to separate the different components of said experience (knowledge component, emotional component...). Thus, within Postrationalist Cognitive Psychotherapy, the narrative structure of human experience is actually a network of experiences that we are living, assimilating and interconnecting with each other to end up forming the identity staff.
Bibliographic references:
Feixas, G; Miró, T. (1993). Approaches to psychotherapy. An introduction to psychological treatments. Ed. Paidos. Barcelona.
Fernndez, A; Rodriguez, b. (2001). The practice of psychotherapy. The construction of therapeutic narratives. Ed. Desclée de Brower. Bilbao.
Leon, a. and Tamayo, D. (2011). Post-rationalist cognitive psychotherapy: an intervention model focused on the identity construction process. Katharsis, 12: 37-58.