Status Dynamic Psychotherapy

Status Dynamic Psychotherapy (“SDT”) is an approach to psychotherapy that was created by Peter G. Ossorio at the University of Colorado in the late 1960s as part of a larger system known as "Descriptive Psychology," and that has subsequently been developed by other practitioners. Its distinguishing characteristic is that it does not focus on the factors traditionally targeted for change by other prominent schools of psychotherapy such as the client’s behaviors, cognitions, insight into unconscious factors, and patterns of interaction with significant others. Instead, it focusses on bringing about changes in clients’ statuses; i.e., the positions that they occupy in relation to everything in their worlds, including themselves and aspects of themselves. Proponents of SDT maintain

• that this emphasis does not conflict with the emphases of other schools,
• that Status Dynamic ideas can be used in conjunction with them in an integrated way, and
• that SDT thus represents a way for therapists to expand (vs. replace) their repertoire of explanations and clinical interventions.