Brief Psychotherapy – History and Definition

Brief Psychotherapy (BP) has its origins in Psychoanalysis and emerged when some psychoanalysts and theorists of the 1930s began to disagree with some of Freud’s positions, with regard to theory and technique. (GILLIÈRON, 1983/1986). Among them, mainly with regard to the therapist’s attitude in the process, such as: the therapist’s active posture in opposition to the neutrality and passivity of the traditional psychoanalyst and the greater flexibility against the crystallization of the technique that prevailed over Psychoanalysis in the 1940s. (SANTEIRO, 2005)

Brief psychotherapy, as the name implies, is a therapeutic intervention with limited time and objectives. The objectives are established based on a diagnostic understanding of the patient and the delimitation of a focus, considering that these objectives can be achieved in a limited period of time (which may or may not be pre-established), through certain clinical strategies. Thus, the BP are, in technical terms, based on a tripod: focus, strategies and objectives.

Some authors divide brief psychotherapy into three main models:

1. Structural or Impulse Model: In this model, the objective is to identify the primary conflict, which is re-edited in the patient’s current problem, and through the basic psychodynamic hypothesis plans the therapeutic work.

Through active and selective interpretation, it has limited time and objectives.

2. Relational Model: It is based on object relations (Melanie Klein, Winnicott), has less concern with technique and less interest in studying aspects such as strict time limits and selection criteria. In this sense, they give greater importance to the experience, the “Here-and-Now” relationship. It has the psychotherapist as a participant observer.

3. Integrative or Eclectic Model: In this model, it allows the psychotherapist to make use of different resources, adapted to the needs of each patient, having less importance on theory and prioritizing the needs of each patient.

As a guide for this text, we will cite the work of Fiorini, Brief Psychotherapy.

The axes of the therapeutic process: Axes basic phenomena pillars play an organizing role in a therapeutic process

Fiorini emphasizes 3 pillars on which to build a change influence system: Ego activation, Elaboration of a focus and Work relationship. These pillars constitute a support tripod for the process.

Produce in the patient an activation of his egoic functions through which it becomes possible to elaborate in a focused way the problematic inserted in a specific vital situation based on the direction in the stimulus and in the symbolic accomplishments and the bond lived in a personified working relationship with the therapist. With the correlative activation of the latter’s egoic functions.

Fiorini gives the following indications:

Patients who get less benefit from brief psychotherapy: chronic psychiatric disorders, outside the acute phase. Example: paranoid conditions, OCD, chronic psychosomatics, sexual perversions, addictions to pernicious habits, severe characteropathy. Only the effort of long-term intensive therapy can eventually produce some stable changes in such conditions.

With expectations of important improvements, the following are indicated: acute conditions (situations of crises or decompensations) Situations of change (adolescence, marriage, graduation, menopause, retirement). Mild or moderate disorder that would not need years of duration (incipient neurotic or psychosomatic problem of recent onset).

As preanalytic preparatory treatment, borderlines and psychotics.

Aside from socioeconomic reasons a brief therapy may be the most desirable treatment for certain patients.

REFERENCES:

FIORINI, HJ (2004). Theory and Techniques of Psychotherapies. Sao Paulo: Martins Fontes.

GILLIÈRON, E. Brief Psychotherapies. (V. Ribeiro, Translation) Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1983

OLIVEIRA, IT Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: from precursors to current models. Psychology: Theory and Practice, 1999.

SANTEIRO,TV Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapies: scientific production in national and foreign journals (1980/2002). Campinas: PUC-Campinas, 2005

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