On Being a Graduate Student and Learning ACT
I'm about halfway through my Master's in Counseling program at Webster University in St. Louis, MO (U.S.). ACT, along with Existential influences, is my theoretical orientation. I was wondering if anyone out there who is also in graduate school and subscribes to ACT theory has encountered the absolute weirdness that this brings. That is to say, that ACT runs against many traditional therapies, including aspects of CBT. However, ACT seems to really run counter to psychodynamic theory in case conceptualization, theory of psychopathology, and many other aspects. At my university, the prevailing theory of most of the professorial staff seems to be psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapy. As I complete classes in school and read books on ACT outside of class, the disorientation that I experience from being exposed to these contrasting theories is an interesting sensation. The relational networks that are being formed can sometimes be a little jarring when trying to reconcile the differences.
Have any of you graduate students out there experienced this also?
- nick clark's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Comments
re: being a grad student and using ACT
I'm a grad student at Utah State in Marriage and Family Therapy, currently I'm leaning toward an Experiential/Humanistic and ACT theoretical stance, and have to admit that I'm feeling the same thing. No one in my program really knows what ACT is except for one professor who uses CBT and incorporates ACT a bit. Trying to integrate ACT, systems theory, and some nice Rogerian foundations has been a challenge. Sometimes I feel like my head is just swollen with a huge bunch of confusing theories with connecting strings and ven diagrams. The paradox of experiential control and avoidance goes counter to what most people use as techniques to manage or cope with emotions. So perhaps I can understand a bit of what your feeling, but I'm still looking for what to do with it.
Good luck!
I'm in my second year of a
I'm in my second year of a clinical program at UNT. I'm in a similar boat as far as having professors who know ACT; only my major professor does. My first year, I really felt the same way as you all have described. AND my mentor has always said things like "good therapy is good therapy," implying that the similarities in ACT-done-well and Dynamic/existential/etc-done-well are abundant.
In the past year, things have changed. I can't stop seeing how similar ACT is to many (perhaps most) aspects of other approaches. You're absolutely right that the theory of psychopathology is quite different, as well as ideas on the nature of cognition. But, so much is nearly exactly the same. The idea of being with another person, the assumption that life is full of suffering, that clients already have everything they need, all people want something, etc. These are largely common factors, but even many of the metaphors give the same message as many of those used in Dynamic therapy.
Seemingly strangely, much of the similarities became clear to me after reading Skinner's "About Behaviorism." It made it really easy to understand other approaches through the radical behavioral lens, and what I came up with, not to say that everyone will, is that the intended function of the techniques of "our" approach is exactly the same as the function of others'.
The other thing that occurs to me is that therapy is an idiographic practice. Sometimes control strategies work, except when they don't, if you get my drift.
Hope all is well for you both!