Assimilative integration: Short-term dynamic psychotherapy for treating affect phobias.

Abstract

An integrative model of short‐term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP) is presented that assimilates interventions from a variety of therapy orientations to accelerate patient improvement. Affect phobia therapy (APT) is a name given to McCullough's STDP to highlight the main treatment focus and to guide therapists to the most efficient and effective interventions. This treatment model is based on the hypothesis that conflicts about feelings, or “affect phobias,” are the fundamental issues underlying many Axis I and Axis II disorders. Systematic desensitization, or stepwise exposure to feelings and defense response prevention, is hypothesized to be the fundamental agent of therapeutic change. APT focuses primarily on the resolution of affective conflicts in a psychodynamic framework, but videotape review and process studies of this STDP model have discovered that interventions from cognitive, behavior, Cestalt, and experiential therapy, as well as self‐psychology, have been instrumental in patient change. Therapy is made briefer by clarifying treatment objectives, simplifying the selection criteria, and using principles of systematic desensitization for the resolution of affect phobias.

Experience of affects predicting sense of self and others in short-term dynamic and cognitive therapy.

“…According to Affect Phobia Therapy (APT; McCullough & Andrews, 2001;McCullough, Kuhn, Andrews, Kaplan, et al, 2003;McCullough Vaillant, 1997), affects and SoS and SoO are considered to be universal phenomena that play a part in most therapies in one way or another.…”

“…Central for change in psychotherapy according to APT are the concepts of activating affects (AA) and inhibitory affects (IA; e.g., McCullough & Andrews, 2001;McCullough, Berggraf, & Ulvenes, 2010;McCullough, Kuhn, Andrews, Kaplan, et al, 2003;McCullough Vaillant, 1997). AA and IA discussed in APT are derived from the science of affects, such as Tomkins ' (1962, 1963) affect theory, LeDoux's (1996) neuropsychological focus on affective classic conditioning processes, Gray's (1975Gray's ( , 1982Gray's ( , 1990 and colleagues' research on Behavioral Approach Systems and Behavioral Inhibition Systems.…”

The Search for Common Factors in Psychotherapy: Two Theoretical Models with Different Empirical Implications

“…Emotional arousal is said to be essential to therapeutic change in several ways, as for example (a) by supplying the patient with the necessary "motive power" to undergo the therapeutic process; (b) by facilitating attitudinal change and enhancing sensitivity to environmental influences; and (c) by breaking up old patterns of personality organization and facilitating the achievement of better ones (p. 46). Here they criticize Western psychotherapies for not making full methodological use of this factor, considering it as "a by-product of their procedures rather than a primary focus" (p. 47). Whether this hypothesis is correct or not, it represents one of several examples of hypothetical methodological principles of the MPS kind that are formulated by Frank and Frank. That is, Frank and Frank's (1991) common factors model is a mix of RPP and MPS factors.…”

Cognitive Learning Theory

“…As examples from healthcare research, respondent conditioning has been used to extinguish chemotherapy patients' anticipatory nausea and vomiting (Stockhurst, Steingrueber, Enck, & Klosterhalfen, 2006), while systematic desensitization has been used to treat drug addiction (Piane, 2000), phobias (McCullough & Andrews, 2001), tension headaches (Deyl & Kaliappan, 1997), and to teach children with ADHD or autism to swallow pills (Beck, Cataldo, Slifer, Pulbrook, & Guhman, 2005). As another illustration, prescription drug advertisers regularly employ conditioning principles to encourage consumers to associate a brand name medication with happy and improved lifestyles; once conditioned, consumers will likely favor the advertised drug over the competitors' medications and the much less expensive generic form.…”