An organising framework for personal psychotherapy integration

Psychotherapy has developed from four foundational schools of psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioural, humanistic, and transpersonal psychology, and it has been estimated (Karasu 1986; Corsini 1995) that over 400 systems of psychotherapy have evolved. However, empirical studies (Asay & Lambert 1999) suggest that the quality of the therapeutic relationship, regardless of system, is the major influence on therapeutic outcome. These professional factors, and other economic and social influences (Norcross & Newman 1992), engendered a psychotherapy integration movement and a burgeoning of integrative approaches and publications. This movement, formalised by SEPI in 1982, is described currently by three main routes to integration (Safran and Messer 1997), which offer little guidance and leave several issues unresolved (Hollanders 2000b). This PhD thesis presents a new organising framework by which psychotherapy integration can be understood, described and developed. It consists of three dimensions I call constructive, complicit and contiguous
integration, and it forms the connecting principle for the published works. The works cover over six years of qualitative inquiry into psychotherapy integration using a heuristic research strategy (Moustakas 1990), which incorporated interpretative phenomenology, case studies, reflexive action and writing as component methods.
The new organising framework redefines the current topography of psychotherapy integration and provides an innovative tool for aspiring integrationists. Constructive integration repositions the existing routes to integration and is illustrated by articles on games and projective identification, relationship in organisations, Jung and object relations, and countertransference. Complicit integration emphasises how higher-order integrative approaches simplify the current complexity of psychotherapy. This is exemplified by articles on Clarkson's relational framework in Kleinian psychotherapy and brief dynamic therapy. Contiguous integration reflects how psychotherapy relates to the world at large. Freud's anthropology, Bion's group theories and Jung's collective unconscious are examples of this dimension. I present four articles on organisational and social artefact to further illustrate this dimension. Finally, I present an article on psychotherapy integration itself, which describes these dimensions and the innovative framework they form. I then highlight why this PhD thesis represents a significant and original contribution to knowledge.