Philosophy:

The philosophical layer is the more abstract plane of any practice. It addresses the notions of reality, knowledge production, and ethics. We all have some assumptions about these three areas, but it is quite helpful to make them explicit and to see if there are like-minded people in the field.

Scientific 🔬
Description: The world can be studied by trials and statistics. An impartial observer tries to clean itself from distortions and emotions to reach a pure access to reality. We need to focus on what can be predictable and controllable, and leave behind knowledge that does not fit with this assumptions. It encompasses positivism and post-positivism.
Example: Research with statistics about efficiency in psychotherapy, using neuroimaging and psychobiology.
Traditions: Evidence Based, CBT
Constructive 🏗️
Description: Reality is build, it is a construction that emerges by language, biology and culture. We need to study those constructions at the individual and also the social levels. We do not aim to have one truth, but one for each construction we are researching. It includes constructivism and socio-constructionism.
Example: A a therapist who prefers to work in the unknown, and not create systems for their clients. Sometimes the unconditional positive regard of person centred is the base for this.
Traditions: It has representatives in many traditions, like Person Centred, Psychoanalysis, Psychodynamic, etc.
Phenomenology 🪞
Description: Experience is the deepest truth we can access as we are experiential beings. We need to develop methods to acknowledge our prejudices and how they affect what we experience. From Husserl, Heidegger and Merlou Ponty, this tradition has strong foundation in philosophy.
Example: Person centred and Focusing exploratinos of experience as a way of unveiling deeper truths in the client.
Traditions: Person Centred, Focusing, Relational Psychoanalysis.
Hermeneutic 🀄
Description: Symbols, behaviors, practices, thoughts, they all have deeper truths if we take the time to investigate. We are part of the investigation, as symbols require our own process of extending our horizons of meaning and challenging our pre-conceptions.
Example: Psychoanalysis working with dreams and their symbols.
Traditions: Psychoanalysis, Jungian Analysis
Cybernetic 💻
Description: The world is made of processes and patterns, that we can model and intervene. There is not need for deep abstractions or associations when we can see what is actually happening and describe it formally. Computers are a type of system, and families are another. We can use similar methods, and see the world as information. G Bateson was one of the first ones to use these methods in a psychological research.
Example: A systemic therapist describes the communicational patterns of a family, and discovers that the father raises the voice every time one of the children speaks. The therapist interrupts this pattern the next time it happens.
Traditions: Systemic Therapy, Pragmatic Therapy.
Spiritual 🙏
Description: The world is mysterious and that is beautiful. Awe, compassion, intention are important parts of human experience. The spiritual philosophy searches for the harmony that leads to the expression of our deepest self. We create the conditions, but are the deeper forces which need to act.
Example: Rogers describing his late practice; Jung searching for synchronicity, alchemy, Self; Transpersonal Psychology studying altered states.
Traditions: Jungian Anyalysis, Transpersonal Psychology, humanistic therapies.
Participatory 🧑‍🤝‍🧑
Description: We are part of what we study and we need to own it. Reality is unique for each, but at the same time there is a common reality we are all accessing in our participation with it. Our methods cannot separate action and knowledge.
Example: Using enactments in session in a disciplined way, means to accept we are part of the process and we need to be careful and ready to repair.
Traditions: Relational Psychoanalysis, Intersubjective Psychoanalysis, Psychodrama, Drama Therapy.