THE PROCESS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

In the USA, if for whatever reasons you find yourself in the office of a psychotherapist, he will do what is called Intake Assessment. He asks you questions about you and what brought you to his office. This may take more than two hours. After which he decides if you have issues that he can address or tell you to try to cope as much as you can (that is, he sees you as normal).

If he assesses your issues as warranting psychotherapeutic intervention, he may give you a diagnosis. Most therapists use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association in making their diagnosis (supplemented with IQ and Personality Tests, such as the WAIS, WISC and MMPI).

There are all kinds of mental disorders, including serious and mild ones. Serious ones include schizophrenia (it has many subtypes, including disorganized, paranoid, catatonic, undifferentiated, residual and so on), delusion disorder (it has five subtypes: grandiose, persecutory, jealous, erotomaniac and somatic), mania, depression, the various types of anxiety disorders, the various types of personality disorders (paranoid, schizotypal, schizoid, narcissistic, antisocial, borderline, histrionic, avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, passive aggressive), drug addictions, addictions to overeating and addiction to sex, mental disorders found in children; there are hundreds of mental disorders.

It is not my goal to describe the various mental disorders here. Suffice it to say that I dealt with most of them in the therapeutic context.

For our present purposes, the psychotherapist makes a diagnosis and tells you what his Treatment Plan is going to be; it includes seeing you once a week for an hour for talk-based psychotherapy and if you have a disorder that requires medications, he has a physician prescribe the required type of medication for you.

Psychotherapy entails talking to your therapist and or taking medications if those are called for. Most of psychotherapy consists in the therapist listening to you talk about your issues and asking you leading questions and helping you to find answers to your problems; therapists are not God and, as such, do not have pat answers for you; they help you and your higher self, the Holy Spirit, to find answers that work for you.

Most Psychotherapists employ eclectic therapeutic modalities, which apply whatever works, therapy be it psychoanalysis, behavioral, cognitive behavior therapy, giving medications or a combination of these.

According to A course in miracles, psychotherapy lies in changing one’s self-concept. Most of us have normal self-concepts; some people, due to biological and social reasons, have false self-concepts.

In schizophrenia, delusion, mania and even anxiety disorders and personality disorders, the individual has a false, grandiose self-concept, he sees his self as important beyond what is real.

The process of therapy is to not strengthen the patient's separated ego but to help him let go of his ego and become egoless.

Mental health lies in seeing one as egoless, as not the separated self, big or small, but as one with all people; in Alfred Adler’s language, one then works for our mutual social interests and at the spiritual level identify with our one shared self.

Much of what I said in this section is not found in A course in miracles; here, I write from my clinical experience.

IS PSYCHOTHERAPY A PROFESSION?

To come to our world, we must forget our identity as the unified son of God. We do not remember that we are the sons of God. The earth is a place for those who have forgotten their identity and must learn new identity.

In childhood we learn the ways of the world; we learn that we are ego, separated self-concepts in bodies. We learn about interpersonal relationships and how to have good relationships with each other. This world is a place of learning.

We learn science and technology and use those to adapt to the exigences of the world of space, time and matter.

Psychotherapy, like everything in this world, is learned. If you want to become a psychologist or psychiatrist, you go to school and learn their parameters.

However, there are those who do not need too much formal training to understand human nature and behavior.

It is advisable to have formal training to become a psychotherapist or minister of God, but there are those who without formal education are as good or better than the best trained mental health professionals.

You know that you learn from some of your friends and enemies about the nature of being and can also learn from educated philosophers. You make the decision who teaches you best and gravitate to him or her.

It is ideal to listen to mental health professionals and to your friends and foes for guidance in your life, both do help you.