Integrative
Psychotherapy
"No mud, no lotus” - Thich Nhat Hanh
The term integrative of Integrative Psychotherapy has a number of meanings. It refers to the process of integrating the personality, taking disowned, unaware, or unresolved aspects of the self and making them part of a cohesive personality, reducing the use of defense mechanisms that inhibit spontaneity and limit flexibility in problem solving and relating to people, and re-engaging the world with full contact. It is the process of making oneself whole. Through integration, it becomes possible for people to face each moment openly and freshly without the protection of a preformed opinion, position, attitude, or expectation.
Integrative Psychotherapy also refers to bringing together of the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems within a person with an awareness of the social and transpersonal aspects of the systems surrounding the person. These concepts are utilized within a perspective of human development in which each phase of life presents heightened developmental tasks, need sensitivities, crises, and opportunities for new learning.
Integrative Psychotherapy takes into account many views of human functioning. The psychodynamic, client-centered, behaviorist, cognitive, family therapy, gestalt therapy, Reichian, object relations theories, psychoanalytic self-psychology, and transactional analysis approaches are all considered within a dynamic systems perspective. Each provides a partial explanation of behavior and each is enhanced when selectively integrated with other aspects of the therapist’s approach.
The psychotherapy interventions used in Integrative Psychotherapy are based on research validated knowledge of normal developmental processes and the theories describing the self protective defenses used when there are interruptions in normal development.
Integration within the psychotherapist is the capacity to assimilate and harmonize all of these various concepts and approaches in a way compatible with our own personality as we engage in the intersubjective space with each client.
From www.integrativeassociation.com official site from International Integrative Psychotherapy Association
