Author: Matias E. Salgado
Abstract
In the world of Psychotherapy, the wide variety of models with its group of interventions, strategies, and activities assure us they can “lead us to Rome”. Nevertheless, as soon as we set foot in the clinical world we can perceive how limited these approaches can be. A large body of research supports that psychological distress can be understood through transdiagnostic processes, and encourage the development of universal models. On that basis, from Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) and its therapeutic application, in the Method of Levels (MOL) we describe the four fundamental aspects to make therapy “more therapeutic”: (1) to sustain focus on the problem, (2) to facilitate some form of external expression, (3) to involve a change in emotional state, and (4) to generate a shift in points of view to evaluative, higher-level perspectives. The more present these four components the therapy has, the more effective it becomes. Focusing on increasing the extent to which these “fundamental four” exist in any therapeutic encounter could be the most important thing a therapist can do to assist in the effective and efficient amelioration on people’s distress.
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