The Paradoxical Intervention
Closely associated with reverse psychology in psychotherapy is the technique of 'the Paradoxical intervention....This technique has also been called "prescribing the symptom" and "antisuggestion"'. Here the technique employed is to frame the therapist's 'message so that resistance to it promotes change (i.e. paradoxical prescriptions, reverse psychology)'.
Such interventions 'can have a similar impact as humor in helping clients cast their problems in a new light....By going with, not against, the client's resistance, the therapist makes the behavior less attractive'.
Read more about this topic: Reverse Psychology
Famous quotes containing the words paradoxical and/or intervention:
“So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“All of the assumptions once made about a parent’s role have been undercut by the specialists. The psychiatric specialists, the psychological specialists, the educational specialists, all have mystified child development. They have fostered the idea that understanding children and promoting their intellectual well-being is too complex for mothers and requires the intervention of experts.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)