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Relationship And Development Of Child's Personality -- Term Paper

¶ … relationship and development of child's personality -- developmental theories in Integrative psychotherapy and their use by working with clients The foundation of our daily lives is created on the relationships that we have with other people. This contact with others, a feeling of reverence it produces and the relational needs it satisfies are all the requirements for us. Our capability to make complete contact with others is frequently disturbed as we confront the unavoidable sufferings of life, either large or small. Psychological dysfunction will result if contact decreases and relational needs get curtailed. Through a method called Integrative Psychotherapy, people can revive their capability to uphold real relationships and improved psychological health. The integrative psychotherapy is based on Roger's client-centered therapy, Berne's transactional analysis, Perls Gestalt therapy, Kohut's self-psychology, and also the contributions of British object-relations theorists. (Erskine; Moursund; Trautmann, 1999)

Integrative Psychotherapy:

Integrative psychotherapy involves a practice of psychotherapy that asserts the intrinsic value of each individual. This therapy reacts suitably and efficiently to the person at the emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological levels of working, and tackles the spiritual dimension of life too. The procedure of taking renounced, ignorant, or unsettled facets of the self and making them component of a unified personality, dropping the use of defense mechanisms that slow down naturalness and limit agility in problem solving, health maintenance, and linking to people, and involving the world with complete contact is called integrative psychotherapy. People can encounter each instant moment explicitly and new moments with integration and without the safety of a pre-formed view, point, approach, or anticipation. Many views of human working are thought about in integrative psychotherapy. (What is Integrative Psychotherapy?)

The following are taken into account in a dynamic systems viewpoint: psychodynamic, client-centered, behaviorist, cognitive, family therapy, Gestalt therapy, body-psychotherapies, object relations theories, psychoanalytic self-psychology, and transactional analysis. Each offers a fractional elucidation of behavior and each is improved when selectively intertwined with other facets of the therapist's approach. The goal of an integrative psychotherapy is to assist completeness such that the quality of the person's being and working in the intra-psychic, interpersonal and sociopolitical space is enlarged with suitable regard for each individual's personal limitations and external limitations. (What is Integrative Psychotherapy?) That the choices made and viewpoints created during one's shaping years keep on shaping and influencing one's perceptions, attitudes and behaviors through the whole sphere of one's life. This is the leading theory of integrative psychotherapy. (Erskine; Moursund, 1998)

Theories of Integrative Psychotherapy:

Integrative transactional analysis theory is formed by a theory of motivation, a theory of personality, and a theory of methods. Human working and the need for stimuli, structure, and relationship are studied by the theory of motivation. The internal and external contact, disruptions to contact, life script, and ego function are explained by the theory of personality. The influence of a healing relationship is highlighted by the theory of methods. These theories aid clinicians in recognizing human beings, in regularizing the roles of psychological processes, and in curing through relationship. A theory of motivation merges the theories of personality and methods by offering a complete knowledge of human working. A theory of human motivation comes from the biological necessities of stimulus hunger, structure hunger, and relationship hunger. Under theory of personality, ego states, transference, and the script system are the main ideas recognized. Two ego states, namely Child ego state and Parent ego state, are considered as detached states of the ego that have not become linked by way of life experiences. (Core Concepts of an Integrative Transactional Analysis)

Though the defensive mechanisms even out and look after the individual, this steadiness limits the naturalness, familiarity, and suppleness so necessary for development. Categories of specific methods include the processes of inquiry, attunement, and involvement. The process of inquiry includes the therapist being open to finding out the client's viewpoint while the client concurrently finds out his or her sense of self with each of the therapist's knowledge improving statements or questions. Attunement is a two-phase process which starts with empathy that is, being responsive to and recognizing with the other's sensations, needs, or feelings and the communication of the sensitivity to another person. Therapeutic involvement is inclusive of 'acknowledgment, validation, normalization,...

The aim of an integrative transactional analysis is to find out and recognize intra-psychic processes and defensive mechanisms for the client who is in relation with the therapist. (Core Concepts of an Integrative Transactional Analysis)
Development of Child's Personality:

During the usual development process in initial childhood, children will generate a fantasy figure as a means to offer controls, structure, nurturing, or anything that young person felt as absent or insufficient. Some children generate their individual personal frightening creature that threatens them with terrible penalties for slight offenses. Endowing the "fantasy parent" with all the terrible and frightening features of being parented permits them to keep Mom and Dad as flawlessly good and loving. Let us consider the case of Richard. The frightening creature troubled Richard all through his elementary and junior high school years. The creature was no a problem as he attained teenage. But there is a fear of police or teacher trying to punish him if he does mistakes. When Richard's grandmother died in his late twenties, he assisted the family to clean out her house. During the cleaning he kept on expecting to find the leftovers of the frightening creature. (Introjection, Psychic Presence and Parent Ego States: Considerations for Psychotherapy)

During therapy sessions, Richard started recollecting that as a young child he thought the creature existed in grandmother's bedroom, and that he also had the ability to go after Richard to school or at play. He thought the creature would punish him if he commits mistakes. Richard continued his recollection that his mother dispensed a slapping at age 4 in grandmother's bedroom during a family party. Thereafter, Richard formed his thought in the creature and could then go round to his mother for calm, safety, and support. The creature assisted the young Richard to get used to external parental controls and at the same time think his mother as all loving and completely liberal of his behavior. This created image operates as a cushion between the real parental figures and the wishes, requirements, and thoughts of the young child. The unavoidable discomforts of growing up in a deficient world are more bearable because the fantasy figure offers what was absent with the real parents. (Introjection, Psychic Presence and Parent Ego States: Considerations for Psychotherapy)

Child Ego State:

A request to the client to recall or to revive an old experience from childhood is the start of working with child ego state. The client gets straight access to the old experiences. Integration of early experience is possible through the process of recalling the needs and thoughts from that time, at times by expressing what was confined, and by reacting to those needs and thoughts. Through a succession of vocal exchanges, the therapist can lead the client into childhood experiences. After getting the required experience, the therapist can help the child with the adult observing to expose the way in which the life script was formed and spend over the years. The client recollects and gets rid of the early upsets, unfulfilled needs, the way by which he created the defensive enclosure. (The Process of Integrative Psychotherapy)

The recall simulates the early days but additionally with fresh options from the adult ego state and support from the therapist. Through these new resources, the client can take new decisions that break the early defenses. Occasionally, when there are no explicit memories or no specific upsets, the Child is integrated through continuing, consistent contact with the attuned therapist who reacts to the client's needs in a recognizing, authenticating and normalizing manner. Such contact in relationship offers a therapeutic space for the client to crash the contact disrupting defenses and relinquish script beliefs. This is the spirit of the integration of the Child ego state into the Adult ego state. (The Process of Integrative Psychotherapy)

Let us consider the case of Anna. Anna was a 50-year-old insurance company executive. She was divorced for 20 years, having two adult children who had lately moved to their own homes. Her recent trouble was that she was becoming dejected, was becoming more and more removed from social contacts, having the fear that she would not be ever able to find a man who would love her, and was in view of dropping her studies from the University where she was doing her part-time studies for a master's degree in business administration. The reason for her dejection was that her children no longer live in her home where she could overwhelm them with all the love. Anna's main script beliefs were that she is not successful; she may not get what she want; she is all alone; it is all her fault; she cannot trust people. On analysis, it was found that the problem was caused as a result of her childhood memories of loneliness, her parent's…

Sources used in this document:
References

Erskine, Richard G; Moursund, Janet; Trautmann, Rebecca. (1999) "Beyond Empathy - A Therapy of Contact-In Relationship" Brunner/Mazel. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/book-empathy.html Accessed on May 12, 2005

Erskine, Richard G; Moursund, Janet. (1998) "Integrative Psychotherapy in Action" Gestalt Journal Press. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/book-integrative.html Accessed on May 12, 2005

Erskine, Richard G. "Introjection, Psychic Presence and Parent Ego States: Considerations for Psychotherapy" Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/article-introjection.html Accessed on May 12, 2005

Erskine, Richard G; Trautmann, Rebecca. "Resolving Intra-psychic Conflict: Psychotherapy of Parent Ego States" Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/article-resolving.html
Erskine, Richard G; Trautmann, Rebecca. "The Process of Integrative Psychotherapy" Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/article-process.html Accessed on May 12, 2005
O'Reilly-Knapp, Marye; Erskine, Richard G. "Core Concepts of an Integrative Transactional Analysis" Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/article-core-concepts.html Accessed on May 12, 2005
"What is Integrative Psychotherapy?" Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Retrieved from http://integrativetherapy.com/integrative-psychotherapy.html Accessed on May 12, 2005
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