Reality Therapy
Choice Theory/Reality Therapy PSY Our Lady of the Lake University November 24, 1998 Reality therapy is a therapeutic system developed by a psychiatrist, William Glasser, M. ... He created reality therapy out of his own experiences with clients. ... Reality therapy began when Glasser became dissatisfied with psychoanalytic psychiatry as taught at UCLA and Brentwood VA Hospital. ... " Reality therapy is applicable to individuals with any sort of psychological problem, from mild emotional upset to complete psychotic withdrawal. ... Presently, reality therapy is recognized as an effective therapeutic technique. The Institute of Reality Therapy was formed in 1968 to promote the teaching of Reality Therapy. ... In his current book, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personnel Freedom, he has introduced "Structured Reality Therapy Marriage Counseling". ... Its description of how the brain words as a control system provided the theory for reality therapy. With Powers’s help Glasser moved these ideas far beyond pure theory and in his book, Station of the Mind (1981), he related choice theory to the clinical practice of reality therapy. Present reality therapy theory is based on the concept that our brain works as a control system. ... Logically it follows that fundamental to reality therapy is the idea that people, who are suffering from any of the number of behaviors defined as psychological disorders, are failing in the attempt to act upon or control the world around them to satisfy what they want right now. It makes no difference what the problem is, from a simple behavioral disorder to deep seated psychosis, what reality therapy defines as the problem is how the individuals behave as they fail to control the world satisfactorily enough to meet their needs. ... He devotes a significant portion of Chapter 1 in his book The Concepts of Reality Therapy stressing the importance of this mutual involvement. ... Compared to Other Systems As stated earlier, the most fundamental difference between reality therapy and other psychological systems ranging from behaviorism to psychoanalysis, is they are based on the "commonsense" assumption that human behavior is primarily a reaction or response to events or forces in the outside world. Reality therapy completely denies this theory and says that nothing we do, feel, or think is a reaction to external events. ... Reality therapy rejects the conventional concept of mental illness and all the conventional descriptions of mental illness such as psychosis, neurosis, schizophrenia, mania or depression. ... Reality therapy would say that this conventional terminology is an attempt to describe the behavior an individual chooses with which to control the world as they attempt to satisfy their needs. ... Reality therapy only looks at the past for times the individual successfully controlled the world and for behaviors that might again be effective. It is the present that of primary importance and the reality therapist focuses on how we could control the world right now through evaluating our behavior and choosing better ones. ... This psychiatric obsession with the past is not only counter-therapeutic, it increase the cost of therapy to where few people can afford it or afford the insurance that could pay for it if it was not so time consuming. ... It is not unfair to say that the longer the therapist remains in the past, the less chance the therapy has to be effective. ... The Therapeutic Process The goal of Reality Therapy is to help clients to take more effective control of their lives.