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I'm baffled by therapists who list 5 or 10 specializations on their websites: CBT, DBT, EMDR, hypnotherapy, etc. How do people find the time to master all of this? I've been practicing psychoanalytic therapy for ten years and have barely skimmed the surface of the literature.
This tweet obviously struck a chord with many professionals--and not only psychoanalysts. Lots of talk about integration, which I think is a worthy goal but hard to implement clinically. The idea that the psychotherapist should try to adapt and treat *any* patient who... 1
... presents to him or her is a flawed (and dangerous) one, in my opinion. Like in medicine, psychotherapists should be comfortable with the idea of referring patients who are outside of their scope or expertise. Unfortunately, I have found this to be very uncommon. If a... 2
... patient presents to me and I deem them to be a poor candidate for psychoanalytic treatment, or if the patient is suffering from a condition I do not treat, I refer the patient elsewhere, e.g., for pharmacotherapy, CBT, DBT, supportive psychotherapy, etc.... 3
... I do not open my Beck or Linehan texts from graduate school and attempt to apply those models in a mishmash. 4
For some, this is a particularly unsatisfactory method, as it forces them to acknowledge that they cannot possibly be everything to everyone. 5
