Developmentally Based Therapy Essay

As we observe developmental progress, we see that structural growth in terms of representing and differentiating experience is a gradual process that can be partially attained. To foster differentiation and integration, use of therapeutic relationship and transference relationship is effective.

In a developmentally based therapy, the therapist lets the patient do the construction of his own bridges. The therapist looks for those areas where the patient avoids making connections and lets the patient do the work so that he/she constructs his own emotional self.
The therapist’s chief role is to analyze conflicts, help individuals deal with their defenses in order to handle anxiety, which stems from these conflicts, and then assisting patients to reintegrate and if necessary, redifferentiate their experiences.
Structure building is thus a critical therapeutic goal for patients who lack full differentiating capacity. Patients will need to learn to differentiate and integrate their internal worlds in order to deal with conflict, anxiety, and compromise.
What happens if there are failures of development during the representational stage? If representational elaboration is not occurring, the child is left with a preideational or prerepresentational, somatic,

Remains concrete and uses behavior rather than representations to deal with wishes, affects, and inclinations
2. Is severely constricted and is only able to represent a few of the affective-thematic domains characteristic of normal functioning
3. Avoids dependency, anger or assertiveness in order to protect the differentiation that is already present.
4. Demonstrates representational affective-thematic life but remains undifferentiated along one or another dimension.

What can the therapist do that will enable the individual to develop these ego structural capacities? The clinician looks for three components to a structural deficit in ego differentiation: The constitutional, interactive and dynamic