Multitheoretical psychotherapy

Domain VI · Brief, integrative, trauma, hypnosis & coaching · Jeff E. Brooks-Harris · 2000 · Honolulu, Hawaii

What it is

Multitheoretical psychotherapy (MTP) is an integrative framework, not a single therapy. It is a way of deciding, for each client, which dimensions of functioning to focus on and which strategies to borrow from seven theoretical traditions. Jeff Brooks-Harris and colleagues developed it between…

Format

• MTP has no fixed phases, session count or format. It is a treatment-planning cycle used inside ordinary individual therapy (with applications to couples and families in the literature). None of the sources gives a typical length; treat duration as set by the client's problem and the focal…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Training structure. The author teaches MTP in four lessons:
• A chapter on training and supervision (with Eisenhauer) describes a single-session supervision sequence; its details are not drawn on.
• Version followed: Jeff E. Brooks-Harris, Integrative Multitheoretical Psychotherapy (Lahaska Press/Houghton Mifflin; WorldCat dates it 2008, other listings 2007). Its content is taken from the author's own 2007 MTP training presentation, which lists all 98 coded key strategies, and from Jones-Smith's (2012) textbook summary of the five-step treatment-planning sequence. The per-strategy markers and expected…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Freed-up choices.
• Reduced self-blame.
• Hope and concrete goals.
• Imposing symbolic meanings.
• Increased vividness and contact.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.