Spectrum of therapeutic directiveness

2022-12-08 Thu 18:58 PM

2023-03-04 Sat 18:25 PM
Changed name from "therapeutic authority" to "therapeutic directiveness" following convo with CO. She thought of authority as comprising two things: clarity (which is always to be high on) and directiveness (which might be productively high in some situations and low in others).

2022-12-08 Thu
Here I have a conversation with GPT-3 to try to come up with a name for a thing.

Me: I'm imagining that there's a spectrum that therapy or therapists fall somewhere on. Where on one side is very hands-off, very out of the way, the therapist is "just a mirror" kind of thing. This shows up a lot in classical Freudian analysis. And on the other side the therapist is very hands-on, very prescriptive, advice-giving, they give a lot of interpreting, they apply strong frames, they might say something like Phil Stutz (Ref. Phil Stutz and Barry Michels 2012 - The Tools - 5 tools to help you find courage, creativity, and willpower): "do exactly what the fuck I tell you" kind of thing.

I think in different moments, for different people, different places on that spectrum are most appropriate — even the far extremes.

But what's a good name for the spectrum? For now I've been calling it the Spectrum of therapeutic hands-on-ness, but "hands-on-ness" isn't good. Can you help?

Assistant: How about the Spectrum of Therapeutic Intervention? It's a bit more specific and captures the concept better.

M: Can you please summarize the concept we're trying to capture?

A: The Spectrum of Therapeutic Intervention is a way to categorize different approaches to therapy. It ranges from a hands-off approach, where the therapist is merely a mirror, to a more hands-on approach, where the therapist is more directive and prescriptive in their advice.

Spectrum of therapeutic directiveness
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