The emergence and development of The Conversational Model of Psychotherapy over the last 35 or so years arose out of a belief that models of psychotherapy ought to have a scientific basis. The key elements of the conversational model are dependent upon some key assumptions. These are that normal development is dependent upon our early infant and childhood relationships being able to meet our age appropriate needs. In time these relational experiences allow us to generate particularly integrated, reflective states of mind that we can call self and identify as health. Disruptions to that development (trauma) prevent the normal development of our cohesive, integrated and reflective sense of self. As a result we and others experience ourselves/us as living in a variety of fragmented, dissociative states that generate symptom clusters that are identified as pathology.
The conversational model has identified that both normal healthy states of self and disassociated/traumatic states of self each have their own language. The conversational model has pioneered a micro-analytic, affect focused appreciation of language that can be used in two distinct ways. Firstly to identify even the most subtlest linguistic indicators of trauma and secondly to use a non-traumatic language to allow the emergence of self/health. This, and all other therapeutic approaches are made possible by inherent plasticity of the brain. This talk will provide an understanding of how the conversational model of psychotherapy is a biological treatment that uses language to generate new forms of relatedness that lead to integrated states of mind that we call self. Another way of putting it is that we can use language alone, or in combination with other biological treatments, to improve people’s symptoms and or relieve them of their psychiatric diagnoses.
