I was delighted to see that my professional association, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, an organization I left in 2014 and recently re-joined, is gearing it next national conference toward innovation. They even used the word, “disruption” in the program description. I am envisioning a national conference on positive disruption as well, and thus like the synergy. There is a change in the air.
Our field needs to be disrupted so as to allow therapists to unleash their natural healing tendencies. It has taken over a decade, but perhaps now, we are finally ready to discard outdated notions about empirical validation and therapeutic techniques. Perhaps we are ready for Interpersonal Wisdom in psychotherapy.
Take a look at this exciting interview between Scott Miller and Crystal McMullen about the primacy of the therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy, and the need for graduate and post graduate training programs to privilege this essential aspect of the cure.