If Professional Counseling is my niche, then Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy is my micro-niche as well as my theoretical orientation. I expect to write extensively about the application of this approach. For now, a short post on the long journey to finding my theoretical orientation.

One of the early classes a counseling student takes describes the various approaches to counseling and psychotherapy. Many classes and several years later, during my internship, I was expected to choose a theoretical orientation. That is, when I sit across from a client, how am I going to go about working with that client?

Choosing Psychodynamic

My choice was based on being able to see a whole person, in all of their complexity. Many books have been written on approaches to therapy so I won’t go far in trying to cover them all. My personal choices came to: Humanistic, especially as practiced by Carl Rogers (very common with counselors), cognitive-behavioral, especially as practiced by Aaron Beck (also common with counselors), and psychodynamic (seemingly unattainable as the province of psychologists). Note: these citations are from Wikipedia but the psychodynamic citations are not up to date… more on that.

A brief conversation in the hall one day with Dr Byron Waller, PhD (supervisor of my internship) cemented my interest in psychodynamic. I like to actively find and correct the source of the problem (systems thinking), not just the symptom or overt behavior. My view is that if the root of the problem is not taken care of the problem will keep cropping up (think pulling the top off a dandelion). Psychodynamic approaches take into account the depth of our life experience.

Evolving to Brief Dynamic

My choice of psychodynamic evolved into brief-dynamic. I found a great clinical manual that I used throughout my internship: Concise Guide to Brief Dynamic and Interpersonal Therapy 2^nd Ed. (Levenson, Butler, Powers & Beitman, 2002). Eventually that guide was replaced by the integrated and contemporary theory I was looking for: Key Competencies in Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy (Binder, 2004)

Next Monday’s An upcoming post on theory will cover Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy using Binder, Levenson, and Weissman as the authorities and me as the professional bridge to understanding.