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Psychotherapeutic work is voluntary, and based on
trust and a desire to understand oneself better. Having
such contacts regularly over an extended period of time
can lead to a deeper understanding one’s own life and
motives, along with the workings of conscious and most
especially unconscious factors. This is a strength of the
psychotherapeutic approach something that makes it
distinct from other ways of gathering information.
The forms of psychotherapy that were offered in our
work were group psychotherapy and individual psychodynamic
psychotherapy. Some of the clinic’s psychotherapists
have extensive experience in working with men in groups.
These experiences have proven very positive and initial
treatment results have been good. Therefore, it seemed
natural to offer the men primarily group therapy. Similar
experiences of working with women in a group did not
exist at the clinic; they were therefore offered individual
psychotherapeutic contacts. Since the overall goal was to
gather relevant clinical experience and knowledge, we did
not consider it a problem that the form of treatment differed
for women and men.
In order to better reflect on the material gathered from
these contacts, we used several tools and instruments of
investigation.
Systematic reflections of the
psychotherapeutic contacts
Supervision: The psychotherapists have had continuous
supervision with psychoanalytical orientation in two
different supervision groups, one for those working with
men and one for those working with women. Supervision
has been process oriented, but has also attempted to stimulate
understanding of the nature of client’s difficulties in
a more general sense.
Conferences and interviews: A whole day conference
was held each term. The clinical experiences in working
with each group of clients was compared and discussed,
and relevant literature has also been read to aid reflective
work. However, these conferences proved inadequate
for discussing all relevant questions that surfaced in the
clinical contacts. We therefore supplemented our work
with interviews in which both groups of psychotherapists
interviewed each other, in order to engender a better understanding
for the other’s work and findings. From these
interviews an attempt was made to systemise clinical experiences
and a number of hypothesis were formulated.
International exchange: In order to guide and stimulate
our work visits to The Portman Clinic in London were
organised. The Portman has a long tradition of working
with sexual problems from a psychoanalytical view, and
the visits helped us to reflect on our work.
Investigational instrument
Journal Template: A journal template was created in
order to collect important facts about clients’ background
in reference to circumstances of childhood, traumatic
experiences and so on. It was also used to summarise
the course of each contact, for example the number of
cancelled visits, failure to attend, etc. Templates were
completed at the end of each contact by the therapist.
Templates were used to help describe general clinical
experiences and formulate new questions.
Follow up with CHAP: All psychotherapists were
trained in using “Change After Psychotherapy (CHAP),
developed by Sandell (1993). CHAP is a method for measuring
the effect and the experienced qualitative change
of psychotherapy. It is built on the patient’s subjective
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