Fascinating Interfaces and Systems: Integrating Biology, Psychology and Social Sciences in Teaching, Therapy and Coaching

Abstract

To help people and families who do not function optimally, as a therapist or a coach, you need to be 'Always confident but never certain'. You need to be a confident leader of the process. To be confident you need a therapeutic map to quickly find your way in the ever new and ever changing territories that these individuals and families represent. Once you become certain however, you become dangerous, because you are no longer open to feedback. Therapists become certain when they treat the map as if it were the territory. They also become certain when they believe in their intuitions. Although all kinds of unscientific psychobabble claim the contrary, it's better not to follow your intuitions. Research on the role of intuitions in decision making shows that they are 50/50 bets, unless these intuitions are learned under specific conditions (Kahneman and Klein 2009). Every therapeutic strategy is nothing but a hypothesis, inspired by your therapeutic map, but that needs to be tested in a continuous learning process of trail and error. In this chapter the author describes his therapeutic maps at different levels: the level of epistemology, the level of methodology and the level of technique. He suggests an eco-psycho-somatic approach to therapy to better integrate relevant knowledge from different scientific domains and to pay special attention to what goes on at the interface between them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)