[Therapeutic interaction to promote patients' recovery]

Abstract

What the author considers as key points are described regarding how therapists could best interact with patients to promote recovery. 1. Listening to a patient's stories with an open mind. Treatment should start off by therapist's listening to what the patient states as unknown, a new experience, before drawing on theories and past experiences, which should be put on hold. 2. Making efforts to understand. The work to expand understanding of the patient leads to inquiring about his/her life history and situation. Tracing back the history helps to not only explore the cause, but also find potential resources that contribute to treatment. Inquiring about the situation the patient is in provides information not only on how symptoms have developed, but also on how the patient has made efforts to overcome the situation, in which the driving power towards change can be found. 3. Refraining from a hasty understanding. Sometimes therapists can erroneously feel that he/she understands the patient's experience simply by applying specific theories to it. In order to avoid such misperception, therapists needs to continuously test and correct their theoretical hypothesis about patients through practice. 4. Bringing empathy. Not just reflecting on the patient's words, the therapist should also be able to accept anxiety and agony as universal feelings that any human being could have at times. To acknowledge that it is natural to find universal human desire underlying the patient's presenting agony is considered highly empathic. In addition to conditions 1-4 that are necessary to bring about change, the following is mentioned as a condition of therapeutic interaction sufficient to promote recovery. 5. Respecting and promoting natural resilience that a patient possesses. The emphasis is placed on developing environmental conditions that support the expansion of a range of experiences through which a patient's natural resilience is stimulated, which, in turn, could lead to internal change. The practice of such an interaction was illustrated in the treatment of a depressive patient and a patient with PTSD.