Personal Change and Intervention Style

Abstract

This article is a conceptualization of how people create for themselves a behavioral and experiential world that has meaning and continuity, and how the energies that maintain stability can be redirected toward desired change. This model is a resource for generating growth-producing interventions in helping situations such as psychotherapy, and for organizing research data concerning therapeutic interaction. Each of these topics will be explored in the sections that follow. The model is then applied to a film of three therapists-Carl Rogers, Frederick Perls, and Albert Ellis-at work.