Introduction:

THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

Metacommunicative units can be applied for the correction of deviant behavior at any level of integration. A point can be intercalated in a transaction or whole transactions in an institutional procedure can be directed toward educating novitiates or changing the behavior of deviants.

In the last century there has been a progressive evolution of special transactions for changing the behavior of neurotic and schizophrenic subjects. Freud (1933) developed a strategy for extensive review of the patient’s conceptions and a specialized transaction evolved which is called insight, expressive or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This transaction usually has the following features: fifty-minute sessions are held one to five times a week. The therapist and patient form a special relationship which is descriptively called rapport. Over time the patient tends to re-enact his childhood patterns of behavior in the relationship with the therapist, whereupon his relationship is called a transference. This behavior is then observed for critical examination, interpretation, and discussion. Through insight the patient thus can unlearn his existing concepts, values, and patterns of action and perhaps (Alexander and French 1946; Mowrer 1950) learn new ones (Bibring 1954; Devereux 1956; Rogers 1958; Shands 1960; Ford and Urban 1963).

In the 1940s these approaches were applied to schizophrenic patients (Fromm-Reichmann 19 50; Bychowski 1952; Rosen 1953). In the social science era, the 1950s, the methods of psychotherapy were increasingly applied to groups, including the family. It became common practice for co-therapists to manage the therapy group, and the relationships of the group members came to be scrutinized as well as the behavior of a particular patient-member (Jackson 1962; Ackerman 1966).

Whitaker, Malone, and the Atlanta group played a prominent part in these developments. They developed special applications of psychotherapy for the schizophrenic patient (Whitaker and Malone 19 53). They pioneered in family therapy (Whitaker 1958) and co-therapy techniques (Whitaker, Malone, and Warkentin 1956). Session I was an example of their technique. It shows features of classical psychotherapy, as described in Chapter 11, and features of the family and co-therapy approaches, as described in Chapter 12.