The Power Threat Meaning Framework and Self-Discrepancy Theory: Complementary Perspectives

Abstract

The efficacy of psychotherapy is now well-established, and research has provided strong evidence for several change factors, such as the therapeutic relationship, insight, corrective experiences, and reality testing (Goldfried, 2019). Increased understanding of the therapeutic change process has been a notable advance in psychotherapy, but an agreed view of the nature and causality of psychological problems has eluded the psychotherapeutic professions. The dominant medical paradigm within psychiatry and psychology asserts a predominantly neurobiological basis for psychological problems while humanist and relational paradigms prefer a broader and meaning-oriented basis for understanding such problems. This paper provides a review of one alternative conceptual framework, the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) developed by the British Psychological Society. While the PTMF offers a comprehensive alternative method for conceptualising mental health, it does not provide a specific practice roadmap. The framework’s authors encourage therapists to apply the PTMF in conjunction with their own theoretical preferences. In this paper, I have two aims: the first, to outline and examine the principles inherent within the PTMF, and the second, to provide an example of how the PTMF might be operationalised using an existing theoretical model, self-discrepancy theory (SDT). While the principles of the PTMF can be integrated with a host of theories of psychotherapy, SDT is utilised here as an heuristic to demonstrate the utility of the PTMF.