Background
Reality therapy was developed at the Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles in the early 1960s by Dr. William Glasser and his mentor and teacher, psychiatrist Dr. G. L. Harrington. In 1965, Dr. Glasser published the book, Reality Therapy in the United States. The term refers to a process that is people-friendly and people-centered and has nothing to do with giving people a dose of reality (as a threat or punishment), but rather helps people to recognize how fantasy can distract them from their choices they control in life. Glasser posits that the past is not something to be dwelled upon but rather to be resolved and moved past in order to live a more fulfilling and rewarding life. By the 1970s, the concepts were extended into what Dr. Glasser then called "Control Theory," a term used in the title of several of his books. By the mid-1990s, the still evolving concepts were better described as "choice theory," a term conceived and proposed by the Irish reality therapy practitioner Christine O'Brien Shanahan at the 1995 IRTI Conference in Waterford, Ireland and subsequently adopted by Dr. Glasser. The practice of reality therapy remains a cornerstone of the larger body of his work. Choice theory asserts that we are self-determining beings because we choose our behavior and we are responsible for how we are acting, thinking, feeling and also for our physiological states. Choice theory explains how we attempt to control our world and those in it.
Read more about this topic: Reality Therapy
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)