The three person field: Collaborative consultation to psychotherapy.

Abstract

We describe our work at the Center for Collaborative Psychology. We use a collaborative model of assessment and treatment analogous to Finn's Therapeutic Assessment, and to Fischer's individualized, collaborative assessment, with the collaboration occurring between each member of the therapy team: client, therapist, and consultant. We include a clinical example. In contrast to Fischer's and Finn's focus, the consultation is also directed to the therapy dyad, the consulting psychologist offering a fresh perspective about therapeutic difficulties and progress. We make consultation to the therapy a standard part of our collaborative therapy protocol, required for all therapies conducted through the Center.In this short paper we would like to introduce you to our work at the Center for Collaborative Psychology, which we recently founded. The guiding ideas are archived in Steve Frankel's two published books (1995, 2000), his coming book on therapeutic conjunctions, and his journal articles (e.g. 1997, 1999). One of the main techniques, which we call the "three person field," was developed in a four year project carried out by Philip Erdberg and Steve Frankel. There Phil provided collaborative assessment with more than 30 of Steve's psychotherapy clients, in many cases conducting followup interviews and retesting at 6 to 12 month intervals. There was never an instance when, by client testimony, the work of the treatment was not furthered by this procedure.Our philosophy follows tightly that of Stephen Finn and Constance Fischer, whom, ironically, we have just met. The client is a collaborator, with therapist and client continually integrating new information, in pursuit of identifying and working toward the client's latent goals. The client's stated, manifest goals are continually replaced by a more authentic, collaboratively arrived at, picture of what the client wants and needs. The subjective nature of the therapy situation explains why the collaboration is necessary, as the two participants approach, but never reach, a full understanding of their

Meta-analysis of psychological assessment as a therapeutic intervention.

“…Though they have different names, most commonly they are called either therapeutic assessment (Ackerman, Hilsenroth, Baity, & Blagys, 2000; Callahan, Price, & Hilsenroth, 2003; Finn, 1996, 2003; Finn & Tonsager, 1992, 1997, 2002; Hilsenroth, Peters, & Ackerman, 2004; Michel, 2002; Newman & Greenway, 1997; Tharinger, Finn, Wilkinson, & Schaber, 2007; Wygant & Fleming, 2008) or collaborative/individualized assessment (Fischer, 2000, 2006; Purves, 2002; Riddle et al, 2002). Less prominent, though clearly related, models include collaborative consultation to psychotherapy (Engelman & Frankel, 2002) and brief personalized assessment feedback (Wild, Cunningham, & Roberts, 2007). The most prevalent contemporary model, therapeutic assessment, is a brief, highly structured, theoretically and empirically based approach to assessment and testing.…”