How Trauma Therapy Is Different from Other Therapies
Less Talking and More Doing
Antonieta Contreras, LCSW-R, CCTP-II, BCN, Author
Freud called psychoanalysis the third impossible profession (the other two being education and government). It may be as valid to say that psychotherapy is another impossible profession. Many therapists desire to master several of the countless therapeutic modalities available today in their endless pursuit to feel more adept at offering hope, especially to the large number of individuals looking to alleviate the despair rooted in the experience of traumatization. Trauma therapy requires mastering several modalities and unlearning most of what therapy was before. Not “impossible” but definitely a fascinating and arduous journey for the therapist — and for clients.
I picture therapists when psychoanalysis dominated the world of psychotherapy all through the first half of the twentieth century, and their reactions when the perspective shifted to a more humanistic approach.
There must have been shock and confusion as the paradigm shifted to a person-centered school as the humanistic psychological therapies in the 1950s and 60s appeared and started confronting Freud’s ‘laws.’ That, in tandem with the emergence of psychotropics and closing of mental institutions, must have been a real…
