CMT Psychotherapy 101 will be presented as a three-part discussion, looking at, in part 1, the underlying structure in which to understand the role of psychotherapy, in part 2, the basic goals and approaches of psychotherapy, and part 3, the process of CMT Psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy is a process that explores the interaction of thoughts, emotions, and actions, in the context of relationship, including a relationship with the self and relationships with others. It is helpful to put some kind of structure to these components, because structure gives us an understanding of what we are working with. I find that the BioPsychoSocial model applied to what it means to be human is a good model that fits the bill. This is a fancy word that can stand for body, soul, and spirit, or, body, mind, and spirit.
It is also important to have some kind of a definition to what body, mind (soul), and spirit represent. In forming an understanding of these three components of humanity, I find it helpful to contrast humans with computers. A computer has a body that is composed of the various components of the hardware, including the electronics of the circuit boards and the software that tells the electronics what to do. For us humans, our body is composed of the various cells we have, the chemicals that work in the cells, and the DNA that tells the chemicals what to do. This is the science portion of our humanity. We have learned a lot about how all those chemicals work, but there is still much to learn. It is very clear that body represents the bio component of BioPsychoSocial.
The “soul” of a computer is the environment that gets created, which we call cyberspace. It is called cyberspace because it is not the same as physical space, and yet is a real environment. Entering cyberspace is the stuff of science fiction, and there have been stories and movies that have explored this possibility. For humans, the environment that gets created is what we may call inner space, consciousness, or mind. It is the realm of our private and subjective experience, including what we see, hear, our emotions, and our thoughts. This domain is not physical in the sense that you cannot grab a thought or an emotion to see how long it measures or how heavy it weighs. And yet it is still a real environment, one that we could call mind or soul. Therefore, mind/soul represents the psycho component of BioPsychoSocial.
I view the spirit component as a relational dimension. The way computers presently are is that they are not relational. Sometimes we think they are, when they don’t do what we want them to do, but for the most part computers are machines that do what we program them to do. Once again, computers being relational is the stuff of science fiction, in which there are stories of computers banding together to take over the world and oppress the humans. Whether or not that ever happens, we will just have to let the story unfold as it should, but for now, computers are not relational.
However, humans are relational. It means that everything we understand about ourselves is in the context of relationship. This could be a relationship with our self, a relationship with others, a relationship with objects, such as computers or cars, or a relationship with a higher power, regardless of whether we have an identified name of a higher power, a nebulous understanding of a higher power, or if we do not believe there is a higher power to be in relationship with. Often, “spirit” is synonymous with a relationship with a higher power, but for our purposes, we will refer to it as any relationship. This component is the social dimension of BioPsychoSocial.
Psychotherapy concerns itself primarily with the psychosocial, or mind/soul spirit components, in terms of how they interact. When a person is prescribed a medication, such as an antidepressant, it is a body approach to treatment. The antidepressant has an effect on how the chemicals work in the cells, which in turn has an effect on the soul environment, and so this is how antidepressants derive their benefit. Psychotherapy, however, concerns itself with how the soul/mind and spirit components interact.
In part 2, we will look at the basic goals and approaches of psychotherapy.