As Michael Hoyt (1994) recalls, patients are far less interested in therapy than the therapist himself is. Patients are quite interested in the result.
How is it possible, then, that up to now Single Session Therapy has had so little diffusion?
Althought in a synthetic way, we try to give some answers to this question.
Regardless of the basic training of each professional, there are some assumptions that transversally distinguish the Single Session Therapy approach.
Rather than modeling itself around predetermined psychotherapeutic assumptions or focusing on particular diagnoses, SST is characterized by a mindset that places the tools, methods and interventions of a wide range of approaches at the service of the client in a creative way, always bearing in mind that every single session could be the last.
Some therapists feel that their approach and training are not adequate for conducting a Single Session Therapy. This is not true, actualy.
We explained that TSS can be adapted with evident results in different contexts of application, treating people who have problems of different order and degree.
The question we asked ourselves is: is there a single way to do TSS? Is there a single session psychotherapy model in its own right? Or an exclusive therapeutic model that fits it?
Do you remember where we started from?
In the article The first research in Single Session Therapy, ample space was given to the report of the research by Hoyt, Talmon and Rosenbaum (1992), in which on a sample of 60 people they practiced an agreed session of Single Session Therapy.
Talmon (1990) divided three types of Single Session Therapy:
Dr Jeff Young Director The Bouverie Centre: Victoria’s Family Institute College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University Melbourne, Australia.
What are the world trends that influence and will influence healthcare and psychotherapy in the coming years? Today we will try to see some of them.
In fact, we must bear in mind that the demand in healthcare (the demand) has varied considerably in recent years, and the services (the supply) have had to adapt accordingly – or should have done so for some time.
Psychotherapy is not exempt from this discourse – and it is one of the reasons that led us to talk about Single Session Therapy.
Over 60% of people who need psychological counseling, or psychotherapy, do not require it. (Andrews, Issakidis, & Carter, 2001).
It means that 2 out of 3 people live in a silent and hidden hurt, that we don’t know, so much that “they prefer to get by themselves” (Andrews, Issakidis, & Carter, 2001). And even if “costs” are important, it is the social and vocational factors that influence this choice the most.
In other words, it is above all the idea of taking “long and tiring” paths that stops most people from choosing a psychological, psychotherapeutic or psychiatric path.
Can a name make a difference?
Considering the weight of the words and the value attributed to them, I think so!
So let’s try to qualify the reason for our choice to translate Single Session Therapy into Single Session Therapy, rather than Psychotherapy.
The fact that only one session can be enough to solve even important psychological problems is an old thing, in reality: it has been known for a long time.
When Moshe Talmon (1990) realized that a large number of patients, who he thought were dropouts, had actually stopped coming to therapy because that one session was enough for him, one of the first things he did was, rightly, to study the bibliography.
Surprise: many already spoke about therapies lasting only one session.
In fact, in addition to the now usual single session therapy, today as then there are other terms in the literature such as one-time therapy, short-term therapy or ultra-brief therapy, to indicate therapies of very few sessions, often only one.