Therapeutic Resources
Beyond the identification of development, a DAPP analysis sheds light on the relational process by which such development is fostered. In a DAPP perspective, the role of the therapist is to offer additional resources to the client in order to facilitate novel understandings, experiences, and skills, which might ultimate lead to a more adaptive way of interacting in the world. These resources act as a sort of psychological scaffolding or guidance for the client as she tries to reorganize her behaviors and understandings of her experiences., Progressively less support is given to those tasks as she develops, allowing the client to engage with the new behaviors and understandings with minimal to no assistance.
The aforementioned resources provided by all psychotherapy comprise three overlapping but conceptually distinct relational processes: Attentional Support, Interpretation, and Enactment [1]. Attentional support is the process by which a therapist facilitates the client’s fullest possible attention towards the full range of her activity, which comprises both outward behavior and inner meaning-making and experience. This can be achieved through direct methods, such as asking questions, encouraging the client to elaborate, acknowledging a client’s statement or experience, restating or reflecting, or offering the client feedback. Attentional support can also be offered through indirect methods such as offering reassurance or accurate empathy, sharing the burden of managing distressing emotions so that they can be shared and explored, or explicitly building the therapeutic alliance. Attentional support is primarily focused on maintaining or expanding the client’s awareness of actions, experiences and feelings, and does not entail explicit attempts by therapists to offer new meanings or create new experiences as do the processes of interpretation and enactment, to be described next.
Interpretation is the relational process by which the therapist draws upon her own meaning-making structures to offer novel perspectives or meaning making experiences. Interpretations can be client-specific (e.g. when a therapist shares her perspective on why a client might behave in a certain way, or offer an alternative understanding of another person’s actions), or more generally about the nature of people or the world (e.g. psychoeducation on the nature of anxiety, or normalizing a client’s experience of depression). Once an interpretation is offered for the client’s consideration, that interpretation then has the potentially to act as an antithesis for the client integrate with her own meaning-making structures, hopefully in the service of facilitating more adaptive understandings and skills.
Enactment is the final common resource, and refers to any processes within therapy in which novel experience or activity is evoked and then made a focus of exploration. The novel (and hopefully more adaptive) activities and experiences then serve as antitheses for a client to incorporate, potentially leading to the client’s development. Examples of enactment are when a therapist gives a client directions, homework, role-playing, or desensitizations/exposures. Additionally, meta-communication is a form of enactment, where the therapist explicitly draws attention to the relational dynamics occurring in the moment. Enactment provides an avenue beyond intellectual understanding, facilitating experiential knowledge which can then be accommodated into the client’s schemas.
The therapeutic resources mentioned above can be found across psychotherapeutic approaches, or further, in any helping relationship in which one or more parties assist in the learning of other parties (e.g. mentor relationships, teacher/pupil relationships, parent/child relationships, etc.) Further examples of each of the aforementioned resources can be found in reading the attached chapter from Basseches and Mascolo’s book (2011). All three resources can be found in varying levels according to therapeutic approach, or even across individual clinicians’ personality or therapy styles. Resources can be used in concert, or specific ones might be used more predominately at particular stages in the relational process. In addition to identifying the type of resource offered, a key component to a DAPP analysis is identifying whether or not the client is able to use the resources offered.
[1] The terms DAPP uses to describe processes have specific meanings in particular theories of psychotherapy, but DAPP has redefined and broadened the meanings of these terms to apply to all approaches to psychotherapy. In the 14 approaches studied, all 3 processes were found in all 14.
The aforementioned resources provided by all psychotherapy comprise three overlapping but conceptually distinct relational processes: Attentional Support, Interpretation, and Enactment [1]. Attentional support is the process by which a therapist facilitates the client’s fullest possible attention towards the full range of her activity, which comprises both outward behavior and inner meaning-making and experience. This can be achieved through direct methods, such as asking questions, encouraging the client to elaborate, acknowledging a client’s statement or experience, restating or reflecting, or offering the client feedback. Attentional support can also be offered through indirect methods such as offering reassurance or accurate empathy, sharing the burden of managing distressing emotions so that they can be shared and explored, or explicitly building the therapeutic alliance. Attentional support is primarily focused on maintaining or expanding the client’s awareness of actions, experiences and feelings, and does not entail explicit attempts by therapists to offer new meanings or create new experiences as do the processes of interpretation and enactment, to be described next.
Interpretation is the relational process by which the therapist draws upon her own meaning-making structures to offer novel perspectives or meaning making experiences. Interpretations can be client-specific (e.g. when a therapist shares her perspective on why a client might behave in a certain way, or offer an alternative understanding of another person’s actions), or more generally about the nature of people or the world (e.g. psychoeducation on the nature of anxiety, or normalizing a client’s experience of depression). Once an interpretation is offered for the client’s consideration, that interpretation then has the potentially to act as an antithesis for the client integrate with her own meaning-making structures, hopefully in the service of facilitating more adaptive understandings and skills.
Enactment is the final common resource, and refers to any processes within therapy in which novel experience or activity is evoked and then made a focus of exploration. The novel (and hopefully more adaptive) activities and experiences then serve as antitheses for a client to incorporate, potentially leading to the client’s development. Examples of enactment are when a therapist gives a client directions, homework, role-playing, or desensitizations/exposures. Additionally, meta-communication is a form of enactment, where the therapist explicitly draws attention to the relational dynamics occurring in the moment. Enactment provides an avenue beyond intellectual understanding, facilitating experiential knowledge which can then be accommodated into the client’s schemas.
The therapeutic resources mentioned above can be found across psychotherapeutic approaches, or further, in any helping relationship in which one or more parties assist in the learning of other parties (e.g. mentor relationships, teacher/pupil relationships, parent/child relationships, etc.) Further examples of each of the aforementioned resources can be found in reading the attached chapter from Basseches and Mascolo’s book (2011). All three resources can be found in varying levels according to therapeutic approach, or even across individual clinicians’ personality or therapy styles. Resources can be used in concert, or specific ones might be used more predominately at particular stages in the relational process. In addition to identifying the type of resource offered, a key component to a DAPP analysis is identifying whether or not the client is able to use the resources offered.
[1] The terms DAPP uses to describe processes have specific meanings in particular theories of psychotherapy, but DAPP has redefined and broadened the meanings of these terms to apply to all approaches to psychotherapy. In the 14 approaches studied, all 3 processes were found in all 14.