PARADOXICAL

"You're changed if you do and changed if you don't"(Shoham-Solomon, Avner & Neeman 1989)

Description

Paradoxical therapy is a psycho therapeutic technique used mainly in Alderian and Family systems therapy. It is the deliberate practice of a neurotic habit such as procrastinating, in the hopes that it will go away. During therapy, the client magnifies his own fears or obsessive worries while behaving in defiance of them. He continues or exaggerates the symptom while the therapist forbids or inhibits change. This leads to controllability and mastery over the symptom so that the patient is not helpless vis a vis the symptom. In other words, procrastination becomes reframed as the clients ability to follow therapists directive rather than an uncontrollable behavior (Watzlawick et, al. 1967 as cited by Shoham-Solomon et.al. 1989).

When to use it?

Paradoxical techniques seem most effective with procrastinators who are defying therapeutic directions (Rohrbaugh, Terine & White in Press as cited in Shoham-Solomon et. al. 1989). The therapy works well with clients who feel negative and fail to respond to more conventional treatments.

Effectiveness

Paradoxical techniques have been recently tested and used for procrastination. There is evidence that it is an effective treatment technique both experimentally (Hunsley 1993) and in the anecdotal literature (Lopez & Wambach 1982), but as yet it is undetermined if it is more effective than non-paradoxical techniques. There seem to be also vast differences in efficacy of different types of paradoxical interventions in treating procrastination (Shoham & Avner 1989, Strong 1984, Lopez and Wambach 1982). In some instances, it has proven to have longer lasting therapeutic changes than other techniques. Evidence also seems to suggest that there may initially an accelerated sharper rate of change in procrastination behavior (Lopez and Wambach 1982) with paradoxical techniques, although the subjects did not view their behaviors as more controllable (Ascher & Efrem 1978 ). These initial increases seem later to level off. However, there may be a further delayed impact for paradoxical techniques and most studies have been unfortunately short term. There are also ethical issues in using these therapies because you are tricking the client. However, studies suggest that when a client is told the real reasons for these interventions, it doesn't diminish it's effectiveness (Ascher & Turner 1980 as cited by Strong 1984). Also, it seems that directives to not decrease procrastination are as successful as directives to remain the same (Strong 1982).

References and Citations

Ascher L. & Efrem J. (1978). Use of paradoxical Intention in a behavioral program for sleeop onset insomnia. Journal of consulting and clinical Psychology, 46, 547-550.

Beaver P. & Jackson D. (1967). Pragmatics of Communications: A study of interactional patterns , pathologies and paradoxes. New York: Norton.

Dowd, E. T., Hughs, S. L., Brockbank, L., Halpain, D. (1988). Compliance-based and defiance-based intervention strategies and psychological reactance in the treatment of free and unfree behavior. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 35, 370- 376.

Hunsley, J. (1993). Treatment acceptability of symptom prescription techniques. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 40, 139-14

Lopez, F.G. & Wambach, C.A.(1982). Effects of paradoxical and self control directives in counseling. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 29, 115-124.

Shoham-Salomon, V., Avner, R., & Neeman, R. (1989). You're changed if you do and changed if you don't: Mechanisms underlying paradoxical interventions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57, 590-598.

Strong, S. R. (1984). Experimental studies in explicitly paradoxical interventions: Results and implications. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 15, 189-194.

Strong (1982).Stimulating therapeutic change with directives: An exploratory study. Journal of counseling Psychology, vol.29, 2, 199-202.

Wambach, S., Lopez F. & Cooper R.(1976).Motivational and equipping functions of interpretation in counseling. Journal of counseling Psychology, 26, 98-107.

For more information:

To a taxonomy of interventions, to main procrastination research group home page, To interventions page