COMMON DENOMINATORS IN THEORY FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

In the current climate of thought, the task of effecting a reconciliation of ideas to achieve a single system of theory for psychotherapy appears formidable. The difficulties are both great and obvious. In the first place, psycho- therapy is a body of practice rather than a sicence. The practitioner here, as in medicine, brings to his work an accumulation of observations and workable generalizations issuing from day-to-day treatment. He draws from a range of sources but rarely bases his ideas upon a single system of knowledge. The neurophysiologist may be in a position to address himself to problems falling within a single frame of reference so that his theoretical ideas may relate to one order of dat