Abstract
Psychotherapy has been less often defined as a process of creation than of helping, education, personal development, and repair. There has been only scant empirical research done connecting the creative and psychotherapeutic processes.
This work aimed at studying the assumption that the psychotherapeutic process (in one of the Minia therapy groups) might follow the same stages/phases/micro-processes of a well known model of the creative process.
Clinical data are derived from audio and video recordings of group psychotherapy sessions that were held in Minia Psychiatry & Neurology Department, Egypt.
The researcher analyzed a certain therapeutic theme from the studied therapy group and tried to detect how the therapeutic work regarding that theme has evolved, developed and worked through. He could to put this in stages/phases/steps that were matched to Barron’s (1988) model of creativity.
In the light of that model, the analyzed therapeutic process could be clustered into:
1- Initial sensing, exploration and conception: Conception.
2- Therapeutic group work, including three sub-phases: Gestation.
a. No apparent work
b. Indirect work
c. Direct work
3- Appearance of new meaningful insights, illuminations, and/or decisions for change: Parturition.
4- Verification of the new insights/illuminations/decisions and further realization and responsibility for them: Bringing Up.
Citation:
Taha, M., Arafa, M., Hinshelwood, R.D. and Mahfouz, R. (2009). Psychotherapy as a Creative Process: An Application in a Dynamic Interactive Therapy Group. Doctoral dissertation, Neurology and Psychiatry Dept., Faculty of Medicine, Minia University.
For complete thesis:
- Contact Dr. Mohamed Taha (email: mohamedtaha.online@gmail.com),
- Link to Egyptian Universities Library Consortium (here).
- Visit Minia Faculty of Medicine’s book library.
