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In this discussion I am first preoccupied with defining “intervention,” since this term may be combined with “psychotherapy” in a number of contexts. I should like to present my thoughts regarding those psychotherapeutic activities which, in one sense or another, seem to connote intervention. My presentation is arbitrarily divided into five sections.
Psychotherapy itself is an intervention, a planned intrusion into the patient's life. The psychotherapist accepts a patient for treatment with a certain intent and certain broad general goals of his own in addition to those of the patient. He assumes the patient is ill, that through his professional understanding of some aspects
of this illness he can, possibly, direct and assist the patient toward health. He becomes the agent of an artificial (not naturalistic) intrusion into the patient's life course, a vector which hopefully will alter the direction of that course from downward to upward.
To discuss this aspect of intervention in psychotherapy further would be to suggest rewording the topic to Intervention By or Through Psychotherapy, and depart from the purpose of this panel.
Intervention may refer to the technical maneuvers of expressive (exploratory, uncovering, insight-aiming) psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is an intervention, then how do we go about intervening? The rationale for these maneuvering techniques issues from standard concepts, such as confrontation, interpretation, focusing, dream analysis, handling the transference, attacking resistances, exposing defenses.
A therapist may ask himself, “What is the appropriate intervention at this stage of the patient's treatment? Shall I continue with reflective confrontation, or is he ready for interpretation in one or two areas? Shall I leave the positive transference alone or is it becoming a resistance-requiring confrontation?” Intervention used in this sense has a technical meaning quite different from its English dictionary definition and Latin derivation (inte