What is general psychotherapy

Abstract

The first Spanish-written review of K. Grawe’s general psychotherapy is given and the core of the theory is focused. It deals with school-based thinking and personal adscriptions as confronted with research-based scientific knowledge. Key psychological issues as motivation and action, perception and basic human needs, intention and evitation, conscious and implicit functioning, problem-solving and clarifying methods, are reassumpted. Concepts as motivational inconsistency, pathogenic autocatalisys or attractor/order pattern are introduced in psychotherapy. General psychotherapy idenitfys three change factors: resources activation, disorder-specific interventions and working-through of conflicts. Earlier versions included problem actualization, while latest updating synthesise them in a definition: effective psychotherapy as the synergic combination of activating interventions and working-through of problems. Grawe’s psychotherapy integration theory, internationally knowned, is considered the most relevant European effort in the field.