Understanding
how people change should be a persistent pursuit for those of us who practice
or are training others to become practitioners of psychological healing. I
wonder about our paradigms of change though. I was taught in an era in which
personality theories were very important. In fact, in my doctoral training
program there were three required courses on personality theory and
psychopathology, each from the perspective of a different personality theory.
We didn’t talk about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders
(DSM). This was before the multi-axis DSM-III. I suppose because I’ve
experienced this shift in the conceptualization of psychological problems and
movement away from identifying with personality theories, it may explain why I
wonder if even now we truly understand change. Also, I have to wonder how
people thought personal change happened before there were psychological
theories. It seems we tend to think of our own time period as having the most
advanced and accurate ideas. However, perhaps beyond current
conceptualizations, there have always been common factors that most
significantly account for change.
Including a Spiritual Perspective
on Change
For
Christians, psychological change is wed to spiritual change. Theologically, we
know this as the character changing sanctification process. Is spiritual change
the same as, correlated with, concurrent with, or in some other way connected
to psychological change? In order to answer this question, we have to first
understand change both spiritually and psychologically. We also must seek to
understand the one who is changing and the One who changes.
Can we
assume the Bible has something profound to say about change, without relegating
its domain of influence to morality alone?
I assume that Christians who lived prior to modern psychological
theories grew in character, but also experienced “psychological” problems and
subsequent “psychological” change. How did they change psychologically without
our modern understandings of psychological change? (McHough and Slavney, 1998)[i]
Our vocabulary reflects our current psychological mindedness, with terms like
unconscious, defenses, transference, conflicts, and dysfunction having become
common language. These terms may reflect contemporary paradigms of change, but
paradigms do not have to be prisons that keep us from further understanding.
A Composite Cluster of Common
Factors in Change
On one
level, in our time, we have to adopt a psychological perspective or model of
change, and it needs to be one that our clients also believe in. This is the
positive expectation inducing “myth” that is described in The Heart and Soul
of Change.[ii] It is one of the common
factors of change, along with the client, the therapist, and the therapeutic
relationship. Yet it is not these specific ingredients by themselves, but that
“they cause and are caused by each other, exerting their benefits through their
joint and inseparable emergence over the course of therapy” (Duncan, Miller,
Wampold, & Hubble, 2010, p. 35).
The
challenge is to take hold of what is effective in the change process, without
compartmentalizing and separating out the ingredients and overrating some -
especially not overinflating the value a specific model of therapy. The factors
for change need to then be understood as being a composite, but not a composite
where impersonal models and techniques are deemed most important. Rather,
change is most influenced by the individuals and their therapeutic
relationship.
Timeless Relational Factors in
Change
What
works today to bring about change has likely been true in the past as well. The
positive significance of the “psychological” assistance one person provides for
another has to be transmitted via a model that both believe in, but change
actually progresses through the quality of the relationship between the two
people who each offer their potential.
But
what is the potential that each offers? Perhaps positive psychology is bringing
us back to being able to define and include this potential, in the form of
virtues.[iii] Could
it be that the presence of well-developed virtue or character in one individual
can enhance not only the quality of the relationship, but actually influence
the other to change? Biblically we know from 1 Corinthians 15:33 that “bad
company ruins good morals” (English Standard Version). We also know biblically
that we are to encourage one another (I Thessalonians 5:11) and strengthen weak
knees (Hebrews 12:12). This suggests the character of one person influencing
the character of another, and as we also know, for believers, it is God who is
the One who brings about the deepest changes that transform character into
Christlikeness (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
A Timeless Concept of Change
[i] McHugh and
Slavney (1998) provide one interpretation historically of changing paradigms,
traced back to the Enlightenment, when there was a shift “from diseases rather
than moral failures or supernatural causes” (p. 20). McHugh, P. R., &
Slavney, P. R. (1998). The perspectives
of psychiatry (2nd ed.). Baltimore,
MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
[ii] Duncan, B. L.,
Miller, S. D., Wampold, B. E., & Hubble, M. A. (Eds.). (2010). The heart & soul of change (2nd
ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
[iii] Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic Happiness. New York: Free Press.
Dennis
Morgan, PsyD, MATS
Professor
of Counseling
Columbia International
University
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