Dictionary of psychotherapy

392 Pages·2014·22.73 MB·English

by  Walrond-Skinner, Sue

A
DICTIONARY
OF
PSYCHOTHERAPY
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A
DICTIONARY
OF
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Sue Walrond-Skinner
FOR DOROTHY LANGDALE-SMITH
who knows a lot about all this
Part oJthe proceeds from the sale oJthis book are
dedicated to those many people oJthe developing
world for whom dai(y living is a battle for physical
survival and for whom psychotherapy oja ny kind is
an irrelevant luxury.
First published in 1986
by Routledge f5 Kegan Paul pic
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 ThirdAvenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Set in Ehrhardt
~, Columns, Reading
© Sue Walrond-Skinner 1986
No part oj this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission Jrom the publisher,
except for the quotation oj briefp assages
in criticism
Library oj Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Walrond-Skinner, Sue.
A dictionary ojp sychotherapy.
Includes bibliographies.
1. P~ychotherap'y - Dictionaries. 1. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Psychotherapy - encyclopedias. WM 13 W221dj
RC475.7.W35 1986 616.89'14'0321 85-28267
British Library CIP data also available
ISBN 978-0-7100-9978-5 ISBN 978-0-710-09978-5 (hbk)
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quali~y ~f this reprint
but points out that some impet:fections in the original may be apparent.
Contents
Preface
VII
ENTRIES from A to Z 1-379
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Preface
S. Lesse's (1981) editorial to the 35th edition of the American Journal of
Psychotherapy (no. 4) produced some interesting figures regarding the informa
tion explosion of the twentieth century. He remarked that there are now more
than 62,000 scientific journals in existence so that anyone who attempts
research into even a highly limited field of enquiry - one aspect of
psychotherapy for example - must scan hundreds of thousands of articles to
obtain a reliable overview of the given field. In terms of human resources -
time, effort and endurance - the task becomes one of mind-boggling
proportions. We are faced with the relentless fact that the total volume of
available printed information in the world now doubles every ten years and by
the year 2000 it is likely to double in just one year.
In the field of psychotherapy there are now literally thousands of journals in
existence, each producing articles several times a year, whilst the number of
books produced in each sub-specialty of the field every year runs into many
hundred. This dictionary can therefore only be classed as a modest offering
within an already burgeoning growth area of encyclopaedia, compendia and
word books, all attempting to bring some order to the field and offer some maps
to guide the serious student of psychotherapy over a rough and uneven terrain.
Its raison d'hre stems from the rapidity with which our field has developed
within the last ten years, making many excellent word books and dictionaries
already out of date. Not only have a bewildering array of new therapies come on
to the scene (since, for example, H.]. Eysenck's Dictionary of Psychology was
published in 1972), but the usage of terms shifts subtly in the older
psychotherapies as they are influenced by and seek to influence, in an implicit
two-way dialectic, the changing social, political and intellectual context in
which they are embedded. The private, specialised language of our
profession grows and develops with a life of its own and new entrants need
to be acquainted with the current usage of its terminology as well as the
vertical connections with history and the lateral connections with terms
currently used across the different areas of psychotherapy. It is mainly for these
that this dictionary has been prepared but I hope too that experienced
practitioners who specialise in one or two forms of treatment will be
intrigued and enlightened, as I have been, with the different understanding
that can be gained from considering how the same technique or concept is
PREFACE
used by theorists and practitioners from a range of different approaches.
Many problems surround the compilation of this sort of book. Selection is
the obvious first and I have no doubt been biased unconsciously in what I have
chosen to include and what I have left out. Consciously I have wanted to ensure
the inclusion of many new ideas, forms and interventions that do not figure in
older dictionaries. This means that less space has been devoted to classical
concepts from the behavioural and psychoanalytic approaches. In any case, I
would expect there to be less need to be comprehensive in these areas although
I have tried to be representative. I have wanted to include the most important
aspects of behavioural and psychoanalytic theory and practice and whilst
relying heavily on secondary material, I have returned as often as possible to the
original sources and to the classic texts, new and old, in order to gain as
accurate a picture as possible of the current use of the term. I have tried to refer
to journal articles on each subject area published during the last five years as
well as to primary source material, beginning in most cases with the original
writer's early work.
This brings me to another problem. Terms are used differently and
often polemically by different theorists and practitioners. Many definitions may
be held of the same term - so how does one arrive at a statement which
embodies its crucial meaning, without boiling down areas of difference into a
false consensus? Commenting in 1958 on this problem in the preface to his
Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms, Horace
English wrote: 'A particular art is required to phrase a definition that will
represent, not just a single author's meaning, but the "centre of gravity" of a
whole cluster' of individual meanings. I have sought to deal with this problem
by treating the work more as an encyclopedia and less as a dictionary in the
strict sense. Thus, although I do in the main attempt a definition for each term,
I have tried to elaborate, in an article of varying length, on the diffirent usages
made of the concept. I have provided a short bibliography for most items, to
guide the reader towards the most recent specialist texts which will help him or
her to study the concept more fully. Where a topic is discussed by many
different writers from widely different perspectives, I have used just a few
examples from the method literature with which I have been most familiar or
which has been most easily accessible to me.
Any book is a temptation to fly one's own idiosyncratic kites; to shape and
bend the ideas of others to conform to one's own predilections. I have tried to
avoid these pitfalls - though undoubtedly not altogether successfully. I have, I
admit, 'censored' some types of interventions which I have stumbled across
PREFACE
during the course of my researches, if they have seemed very short on
supporting authorities other than their 'inventor's' enthusiasm, but I have
included a range of ideas which practitioners from the more orthodox and long
established areas of the field are likely to find bizarre, distasteful or
'unprofessional'. Here I fall back on a lexicographical rationalisation and claim
that it is the dictionary compiler's duty to include what is in existence rather
than only what ought to be!
I considered calling the book a Dictionary of the Psychotherapies in the hope
of bypassing the many wrangles about what does and what does not constitute
psychotherapy. But 'mixedness and muddle' is part of the core identity of
psychotherapy in the mid -1980s and psychotherapy should be regarded and
rejoiced in as a plural noun rather than excused and tidied up. No doubt many
will take issue with me as to what I have included and what I have left out.
Purists would probably feel that this is a word book about psychotherapeutic
interventions rather than psychotherapy proper, and even then they might
quarrel with some of the inclusions!
I have made a particular point of studying the many previous compilations of
psychotherapeutic terms, and to these and to the many major handbooks,
reference books and glossaries that have already been produced, I bear a great
debt. In the field of psychoanalysis I have drawn particularly from the following:
English and English (1958), Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and
P~ychoanalytic Terms; Rycroft (1968),A Critical Dictionary ofP~ychoanalysis; and
LaPlanche and Pontalis (1980), The Language of P~ychoanalysis. In the
behavioural field I have consulted in particular Eysenck, Arnold and Meili
(1972), En0'clopaedia ofP sychology and Wolman (1973), Dictionary ofB ehavioral
Science. For many entries in the dictionary I have consulted an outstanding work
of great importance to the whole field of psychotherapy, Wolman's 12-volume
International En0'clopaedia ofP sychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Neurology
(1977). I would commend this massive work to the reader along with the
recently published English En0'clopedic Dictionary ofP sychology (1983) edited by
Harre and Lamb. For many ideas and comparisons I have relied upon some of
the major handbooks in the field, in particular, the Handbook ofP sychotherapy
and Behavior Change edited by Garfield and Bergin (1978), and Gurman and
Razin's Effective P~ychotherapy (1977). Many other invaluable reference and
source books are far too numerous to pay tribute to here. Zusne's (1975) source
book of biographies, Names in the History ofP~ychology, was helpful in filling gaps
in the short biographical entries on outstanding contributors to psychotherapy.
I have followed usual practice and only included those who are dead.