Slide 11. Is radical “structural
change” sine qua non for a therapeutic
action to take place?
In fact,
modification of the UAN does not imply the total change of the network, but
just its partial change as shown in the diagram below.
Slide 12. the
conclusion of Gabbard’s paper
(p.837)
Here, I
quote some of his statements.
“There is no single path to, or
target of, therapeutic change”.
“Any time we are tempted to
propose a single formula for change, we should take this as a clue that we are
trying to reduce our anxiety about uncertainty by reducing something very
complex to something very simple”.
“Various goals of treatment and
techniques useful for facilitating therapeutic change might not be free of
elements that are conflicting or at cross purposes.”
Gabbard
then said (p.826) ; Fonagy and Target
(1996) characterize this process as expanding psychic reality by mentalizing,
or developing reflective function. A principal mode of therapeutic action
involves the patient’s increasing ability to perceive
himself in the analyst’s mind while
simultaneously developing a greater sense of the separate subjectivity of the
analyst. (Fonagy P, Target M (1996). Playing with reality, I: Theory of mind
and the normal development of psychic reality. Int J Psychoanal 77: 217–33.)
I basically
agree with Gabbard and consider mentalization based treatment as a basic method
that we can use in order to prowl forward in our analytic treatment.