Experiential Psychotherapy of Unification

Abstract

Being a psychotherapist trained in experiential psychotherapy of unification, I can say that one has to live it to properly understand it, because it is about living and not only about understanding. But an introduction is necessary, and this is the purpose of this article: to make a presentation for psychologists from other countries. Another purpose is to make known how important concepts of humanistic psychology have been integrated, assimilated, and developed by a section of Romanian psychologists. In a few words, experiential psychotherapy of unification is mainly about creativity, authenticity, and a co-actualization therapeutic relationship, which allows integration of the cultural specific aspects and, moreover, individualization of the psychotherapeutic program: It is an application of main humanistic ideas and values and recent advances in psychotherapy research.

Keywords

psychotherapy of unification co-actualization creative meditation synergy personal development

Experiential psychotherapy of unification has its roots in the psychotherapeutic, counseling, and psychotherapy training experience of Romanian specialists in the field. Its promoters are Iolanda Mitrofan and Adrian Nuţă. Denisa Stoica has made a special contribution to its transgenerational approach. By now, more than 600 psychologists, and professionals from related disciplines, have been certified in this form of counseling, psychotherapy, and personal development. A master’s program with this specialization functions at the University of Bucharest. The Romanian Society for Experiential Psychotherapy also publishes The Romanian Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, where readers can find articles focused on the psychotherapy of unification’s effects, applications, and therapeutic process.

Even though the study of psychology and some forms of practice had been banned in Romania prior to the 1990s for more than 10 years, practitioners from mental health institutions had discovered some psychological resources to confront the illness condition: respect for the human being with her aspirations, possibilities, and limitations; her uniqueness; and the right to be creative as well as the right to express her individuality. They integrated them in this form of psychotherapy, along with other two resources used by Romanians to face the existential challenges: imagination and a strong connection with nature in general—a resource also suggested by Adams (2010) and Berger (2010). On this basis, we can name a happy meeting that with the works of humanistic psychologists. In books and articles written by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Fritz Perls, Romanian psychologists have found the confirmation they needed to use their creativity and knowledge with the purpose of joining other people on their journey to self-fulfillment, especially when they seemed to be stuck or when their distress was too intense to be handled by themselves. After 1990, the study of psychology was allowed again, and these psychologists began to meet in order to discuss a way of working with those who struggle with mental health issues that is now termed experiential psychotherapy of unification. Their effort was also justified by the necessity to train the new generation of practitioners, especially psychotherapists, in the field of psychology.

It was then introduced as a humanistic experiential psychotherapy (Mitrofan & Nuţă, 1999). In its main ideas, psychotherapeutic relationship, methodological instruments, and techniques, it has a humanistic orientation, and moreover, it can be considered a modern and yet classical application in the field of humanistic psychotherapies. The classical elements refer to the ideas considered to be the foundation of humanistic psychology: The essence of psychotherapy of unification is to create conditions to reconnect the person with her inner Self, to increase self-acceptance, and to activate and creatively use her resources in order to overcome the existential challenges she encounters, all while searching for the sense of the symptom, the disorder, or the difficulty that limits her evolution. This perspective is similar to that of Rogers (1951, 2007), Maslow, and Gendlin (Sharma, 2011). It involves creating a therapeutic relationship of unconditional positive acceptance, a safe affective climate that is founded on a holistic, synergistic perspective of the human being and her functioning. The modern elements refer mainly to the use of creative meditation and transpersonal notions. It utilizes metaphors and the witness state as methodological instruments, accessing the transconsciousness (or the superconsciousness according to Jung, 1994) as a way of unifying polarities in the effort to establish a superior equilibrium, to convert experiential difficulties into developmental opportunities through various techniques adapted to the client’s needs (Mitrofan, 2000, 2004). Mindfulness is used frequently in modern psychotherapy, whatever its orientation (Bageant, 2012; Lebow, 2006). But the practitioners of experiential psychotherapy of unification do not borrow a technique from oriental spiritual practices simply because it has proven effects. As they are interested in a practice based on a profound understanding of the humanistic ideas, they have sought to use the meditative techniques that most involve the human being, with special regard to her creative potential; this is the reason for choosing this type of meditation. Although creative meditation has been used systematically in some oriental spiritual practices, I think that people also use it spontaneously and thus it is ancient, but its integration in the psychotherapeutic process according to a theory of human development or to a theory of health and illness has not been researched in a systematic manner.

What Does Unification Mean?

In experiential psychotherapy of unification, the key term is unification, which refers to the dynamic that helps a person overcome existential challenges, including the illness condition. The inspiration for this term comes from both Rogers’s and Jung’s theories of personality. Rogers (1951) described how a person grows to accept her denied parts as the psychotherapeutic process advances and she benefits from the psychotherapist’s unconditional positive regard. This way, she has the courage to face and to open herself to previously denied parts of her inner, profound Self. The psychotherapeutic process helps the client become more accepting of herself at an organismic level: She accepts her internal experience as the experience of her organism into the environment, without denying access to consciousness of some parts of this experience. Rogers noted that while the person becomes more accepting of herself, she also becomes more accepting of others. She is subsequently increasingly open to more meaningful relationships with others in a loving, caring way.

Jung (1996) highlighted some important stages on this path of self-acceptance, and unification. He described how a person has to confront first the Shadow, the rejected part. This determines the constellation of a solution at an unconscious level, a new Self image that allows creative, symbolic integration of the two polarities. This way the person will understand how her projections affect her relationships with others, and as she becomes more open to her profound Self, she becomes more accepting of others. Jung also described how the union of opposites progresses, both in clients’ evolution and in alchemical symbols (Jung, 1998, 1999). First, the spirit unites with the soul, the cognitive and the emotional become integrated at a mental level, unio mentalis. Jung considered it to be the essence of the meditative practice: The individual is aware of his shifting inner emotional experience. We understand that he referred only to meditation that focused on an internal object. But this is only one step. The next step consists of the integration of mental, emotional, and somatic experiences in the mind–soul–body union (Jung, 2000, Vol. 2). The final step is the mystic union of mind–soul–body with the unus mundus, the essence of the human being (Jung, 2000; Wilber, 1982, 2005). It means accessing the transpersonal qualities of the human being: compassion, love, humor, power, and kindness (Welwood, 2006).

In experiential psychotherapy of unification, psychotherapy inevitably evolves into personal growth, and development, as experiences previously labeled as “negative” and other provocative experiences are processed through four steps that rely on the synergistic functioning of the human being. Experience on different levels of human functioning is empathically encouraged and is supported by the psychotherapist during the four steps until the different psychological mechanisms interact with each other in the effort to search for a new meaning for painful experiences; the consciousness capacity is transformed as the effects potentiate each other, and the interactions become more complicated. Those who practice experiential psychotherapy of unification do not claim that they have discovered the synergistic functioning of the human being, but they rely on it in the process: They understand not only that a change in a part of the synergistic system has effects on the entire system but also that there are interactions between interactions that need to be considered when human functioning is in the focus. This means that the whole experience needs to be processed from the person’s multiple internal perspectives. The client might be asked to address internal bodily sensations and perceptions, external information given by all senses, intuitions, thoughts, metacognitions, plans for the future, memories, affective states, deeper feelings and meanings, needs of all kind, and other motivational processes. This is the meaning of the term unification: The person experiences internal unification as experience is processed at all levels, raising her awareness to new levels of functioning, progressing to a healthful and more fulfilling way of being. The idea of unification comes from the holistic understanding of the person in her functioning: Yes, we can shorten the psychotherapeutic program by focusing on a specific part of the experience (e.g., emotional, or sensorial, or metacognitive), knowing that, functioning as a system, the progress would extend itself to the whole system, but the unification psychotherapist does not lose sight of the entire experience for a moment, and he or she designs the process taking into consideration the person as a whole. This way the consciousness itself is transfigured, and it becomes more open to unconscious processes, allowing the finding of creative, fresh solutions to existential difficulties. We can notice the interplay between the two kinds of unfolding of experience that Welwood (1982, 2006) has described. The client feels the psychotherapist’s positive acceptance of both his positive and negative sides. In this way, those trained in experiential psychotherapy of unification maintain a core humanistic orientation while guiding the process gently, accepting the client’s external and internal actions, and discovering their meaning along with him. They step in the safe place of imagination by using metaphor and go back into reality, supporting the consciousness ability in the present moment and finding solutions to real difficulties.

How Does It Work?

There are four steps in the psychotherapeutic process: (a) the provocative experience, (b) exploration of the inner world and the way it was exteriorized, (c) externalization of unconscious messages, and (d) personal transformation by integrating the conscious and unconscious meanings of the experience (Mitrofan, 2000, 2004, 2012). Group work is the preferred form of practice, but individual psychotherapy is also practiced. The provocative experience is a dramatization that the psychotherapist proposes mainly as a symbolic play where group members assume a role and improvise according to the suggested script. It can be considered a form of creative dynamic meditation that allows conscious display and access to the unconscious dynamic so that a connection between the two of them is creatively established at the level of transconsciousness or superconscious (Jung, 1994). The psychotherapist is the one who introduces the dramatizations, but the course of the action is established by each group member and is integrated in a group scene as each person acts according to her own needs and possibilities. The script the psychotherapist proposes is only semistructured, and it contains a metaphorical expression of a psychological issue (e.g., the need for independence, relationship with the opposite sex or with parents, etc.). It can be understood as a creative meditation on a certain theme and has specific effects. It determines the alleviation of emotional distress (Schaub, 1996) and allows access to the witness state, a state in which the person is witness to her actions and she accepts them as they come. It is a “jump” that allows a new perspective over oneself in the situation with a new meaning, the second kind of unfolding of experience that Welwood (1982, 2006) has described.

The inner world, as it has been accessed in the previous phase, is deepened in the next one. In a nondirective way, the psychotherapist follows the person in self-exploration, and he or she helps her focus on blocked experiences in order to support her in expanding awareness to denied parts of herself: in other words, a sequential unfolding of experience (Welwood, 1982). Past traumatic experiences are reenacted symbolically in the therapeutic setting, and with the resources that have been accessed during the first phase (symbolic play or creative dynamic meditation) and the psychotherapist’s attentive support, the person explores new solutions to her problematic experience. Creative techniques—the core of experiential psychotherapy of unification—but also classical “empty chair” work or metapositions are used to stimulate personal solutions.

It must be mentioned that these can only be discovered, lived and experienced on one’s own, in the therapeutic experience. UEP [experiential psychotherapy of unification] depends significantly on the state of living in the moment, in the therapeutic presence, and this, in turn, relies on the authenticity of the connection between the creative minds of the therapist and the clients. (Mitrofan, 2012, p. 43)

This kind of connection and the therapeutic process have many common features with the Hakomi method (Bageant, 2012; Kurtz & Minton, 1997). Also, a school-independent theory, resonating minds, identified four stages in the interactions between psychotherapist and client that lead to personal growth: relaxation, experience, connection, and reflection (Mergenthaler, 2008). This theory also highlighted that the client and the psychotherapist should resonate with each other, at both cognitive and affective levels, a condition that can only be met in the present moment. It is a co-actualization relationship (Motschnig-Pitrik & Barrett-Lennard, 2010) between client and psychotherapist, the foundation of a strong therapeutic alliance, allowing the use of the training experience of the psychotherapist and, the same time, the individualization of the psychotherapeutic process.

The last stage of the therapeutic process consists of living and acknowledging personal growth, and transformation. In completing this experience cycle several times, the person forms an internal mechanism of transformation of her Ego by opening to her profound, inner Self. Becoming aware of and managing this process is the phase during which the client becomes fully aware of her autonomy. She enjoys the process of life, she comes with ideas deeply rooted in herself, and she brings them to life, accepting the consequences and the continuous change. Thus she assumes responsibility for her own evolution.

Symptoms that include problematic, traumatic experiences are reconverted into growth and maturation pretexts, and they are used as opportunities of increasing openness to profound ways of human being. The person accepts her life history as it was, but she rewrites the future scenario from this new perspective. This process of converting past experiences previously labeled as “negative” into growth opportunities is the primary gain the person experiences in the therapeutic process, and it implicitly prepares her for possible future difficult situations.

Experiential psychotherapy of unification also addresses the transgenerational mechanisms of a disorder or a symptom by uncovering its meaning in the family history and in the unconscious dynamic. Archetypal images and symbols are used to link the individual manifestation with the family history in order to discover and work with the transgenerational mechanisms. The key is to access the healing forces that already exist within the client, in his family history, so that he overcomes his struggles. The identified symptom is seen as a metaphorical expression of a certain message that, uncovered and integrated in the life’s course, no longer requires this form of expression. The family history is linked with the archetypal images and structures (Jung, 2003, 2005), and in this way, the family secrets and traumas that have been limiting the individual evolution slowly turn into aids in the process of making positive change. The possible transmission mechanism from one generation to another described only at psychological level by Jung received support from recent objective evidence. For example, maternal exposure to interpersonal couple violence influences the symptom level by epigenetic mechanisms in children 10 to 19 years from birth (Radtke et al., 2011). The effects existed even if the violent episodes had occurred before pregnancy. This component is important since research shows that people with certain disorders, like depression, anxiety, or substance addiction, may choose specific environments that elicit symptomatic behaviors (Harkness & Stewart, 2009; Mitrofan & Stoica, 2005; Răban-Motounu, 2011; Radtke et al., 2011). A similar approach is suggested by Angela Connolly (2011), recommending humanistic values governing the therapeutic relationship when using the analytical technique with intergenerational trauma, and acknowledging that the “capacity of the analyst to accept the reality of the trauma with all its devastating and mind shattering emotions without losing the capacity to imagine and to play metaphorically with images” (p. 607) is essential. Specific forms of genogram are used linked with the characteristics previously described, like art-genogram or genogram with the support of natural elements (leaves, stones, shells, flowers, etc.; Răban-Motounu, 2010), somato-psycho-genogram, and drama-genogram (Mitrofan & Stoica, 2005).

An example of dramatization or dynamic creative meditation is “A Journey in a Balloon,” which focuses on the element air, the symbol of masculinity (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, 1994; Eliade, 2006; Jung 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2005; Mitrofan, 2004), aiming at discovering resources specific to masculinity (Mitrofan, 2004) and integrating them, through further analysis, into the Self image. The participants come into contact with their masculinity, in both its negative and positive aspects. It is a means to access possible past traumatic experiences connected with masculinity, and resources, for which they do not assume responsibility or that they never had the opportunity to discover.

The following instructions are given:

Today you will start a new journey: You will climb into a balloon and you will go round the world. But before starting this journey, I invite you to become aware of your emotions, your expectations about what will happen while you will be in the air.

After you have become aware of your own thoughts, feelings, and expectations, you organize your departure establishing what you need. Once you have gathered all you need for your journey, on a serene morning, you blow up the balloon and leave. Be aware of your thoughts and feelings as you go on this journey!

You gradually take off the ground and lift into the air. What are your thoughts, what are your wishes for later? Which are the qualities of the air as you are rising?

Now you have just reached to the safe height to begin the journey . . . the rising stops and you gently float into the air around you . . . What do you encounter in your journey?

While you advance, you get above a city and you can contemplate the perspective . . . Lots of buildings and skyscrapers, which seem to stretch to reach you . . . But when you get above them, you realize that the air is harder to breathe and smothering. It is dense and insufficient. It is darker. But your way is right through the middle of it. What do you want to do near this cloud of smog and dust? In the midst of it you can, though, see those impressing buildings. How does it seem to you the landscape above which you are floating right now? What do you feel? Be aware of your sensations, emotions, and feelings while you need to do something to get you out of this situation! Explore the possibilities you have and choose one of them! Which are the results of your strategy? . . . As you barely float, the air becomes insufficient. You can barely see around you. What action comes to your mind?

Your strategy worked and you slowly get out of the smothering, black cloud, and you can enjoy the fresh air. You feel it filling your lungs and purifying your organism to the smallest cells, which feel relieved.

At a certain moment the air becomes unclear again, but this time because it is damp. It is not as easy to breathe. The perspective becomes more and more unclear until you can see nothing around you. You are in a very dense cloud that impedes you from seeing further, and you can maintain your direction based only on the instruments or the knowledge you have or your instinct. The air is even harder to breathe, even more damp and capricious. The lightings go near your balloon, endangering it, and the thunders are almost deafening. You no longer have the control over your own balloon, which is wandering through a capricious, sensitive, and noisy rain cloud. You yourself feel impoverished by the air’s humidity. Be aware of the sensations, emotions, and thoughts you are having . . . Which is your dominant feeling while even the fire holding the balloon up is harder to protect?

Right now, when the only help you can get is from outside, an amazing view is capturing you as the air suddenly becomes easier to breathe, fresh, renewed, and renewing: You are soaking in the rainbow’s colors. You find yourself, along with your balloon, in the rainbow, and you are wandering through it in all its wonder and ephemerality.

Savor the experience of being a part of the rainbow. The sun rays caress you and dry your damp clothes, and the silence soothes your ears. All the wonderful colors that exist in a perfect harmony are around you, and they are offering themselves to you. Gradually, amazed by the subtle beauty that surrounds you, you go through the whole spectrum of colors until they finally become dim. You take something symbolic with you to remind you of this experience, and . . . the balloon gets into a zone with clean, light, and easy-to-breathe air . . .

As your attention is no longer focused on what is happening right next to, you can concentrate on what is beneath you, and you see that places become more familiar . . . You have just got to the end of your journey, to the point where it had started. You allow the balloon to slowly descend . . . What sensations, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and memories are you having as you are reaching the familiar ground?

You get down with the memories of this journey, right here and now, with the awareness that the air is much more than what can be felt right now . . .

In a 4-hour group session, first, the participants organized themselves so that they would take with them all they needed for the journey. The majority thought of their basic needs and the supplies to satisfy them (food, water, safety); some of them even anticipated a state of sickness at the point of ascent. They experienced the balloon rise with diverse, but less exteriorized, corporeal sensations: The corporeal blockage was obvious. The lunch time found some without provisions, but the other group members helped them.

The moment of passing over the city with high buildings followed, creating a sensation of discomfort to some of them whereas the others were curious. But they did not stop there for too long because the entrance into the smog cloud made them agitated, which was manifested corporeally. One participant, who had been blocked since the moment the ascent had started, was clinging to someone else. His discomfort got worse at the entrance into the dust cloud, and he covered his nose. Another one “fainted” from lack of air. The other persons came to his help. Someone else tried to encourage the others to come up with a solution: to drop the sacks from the balloon so that it could rise above the cloud of dust. When they were told that this was not enough, they all tried to find a strategy to get rid of it: Some of them said to go even higher, and some to descend. They decided to descend, but no one knew how to do it, not even the one who came with the idea. Further along, a young woman gave up the effort: She sat down and began to tease the person who was feeling sick, saying that there was a hole down in the nacelle at which she was looking, to help the person overcome the sickness. All were amused, but the one feeling sick pushed the person she was clinging to above the hole.

When they got into the fresh air again, they all felt relaxed, they smiled, and then they became more animated. They wanted to “catch some sun.” The entrance into the rain cloud blocked them all. The group’s optimist took the control over the balloon in order to take it to the ground again. They laughed. The others helped him. Their action was a success.

When they found themselves in the rainbow, they were all calm. One of them had the idea to first empty the sand-filled sacks from the balloon and then fill them each with a color of the rainbow. Afterward, they started to descend. Their parting was difficult. Each participant left with a sack with a color. They said “good bye” in several different ways, shook hands, and promised photos.

In the analysis phase, each participant presented the way she had lived the experience, what sensations, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and memories she had had in the previous phase. Everyone chose a certain feminine role. The discrepancies between the verbal recall and the observed behavior and the emotional distress were used as keys to allow old, unfinished business to be brought into the present, and to find their significance. Previous episodes from their lives were reconstructed bit by bit with corporeal sensations, perceptions, emotions, dispositions, thoughts, fantasies, and desires, taking the necessary time to process them entirely. The connections between the several aspects of the experience enabled the participants to become aware of their own behavioral patterns in their relationships with men: dependency, need to control, feelings of abandonment when the control strategies did not succeed, not assuming responsibility for their own aggressiveness and tolerating the other’s aggressive behavior, uncertainty (lived especially at a somatic level), adopting the role of the savior in difficult situations while at the same time blocking personal emotions (that remain due to insufficient processing of past situations), or making the fragile person the target of irony and amusement.

The exercise gave each woman the opportunity to explore the way she acts in the relationships with the opposite sex, according to the image she projects onto her partner. For men, the analysis focused on gender identity, according to the manner it had been formed in contact with persons of the same sex or with the opposite sex, in time. Some women confronted the image of an unfaithful husband; others, who were never married, and who had never had a longtime romantic relationship, with the image of a father who, as a husband, was abusive and hypercriticizing. The discomfort expressed nonverbally during the exercise was the key to bring to light painful memories of abuse or neglect of which they had been victims or to which they had been witness in the past: Especially scenes with ambiguous messages, which had remained unclear, were reenacted. Some men discovered how they detached themselves from their partner when things got difficult for her: They would have rather done nothing or would even break the relationship than have the courage to try to do something to bring comfort.

Metapositions and empty chair work in individual sessions, or role-play in group sessions, brought about the necessary clarification, and the participants became aware of the connection between avoiding confrontation in those situations and blocking their following relationship initiatives, counting exclusively on their partner to make the first move. With the psychotherapist’s support, they confronted those abusive key persons in their lives, expressing not only their emotions and thoughts but also their needs, and they progressed to finding a way to satisfy those needs, especially the relational ones (of love, comfort, security, understanding, attention, connectedness, and independence) in agreement with the partner.

Using reprocessing techniques, they worked on these characteristics and discovered personal resources: to use rich general knowledge, prior knowledge, and leadership skills; knowing and assuming own limits; spontaneity; solidarity with those with similar difficulties; sense of humor; challenge launching; cooperation; and the desire to give. At the end of the session, they were more optimistic about facing the challenges of becoming more active, they felt good about discovering some of these resources within themselves, and they were willing to use them to change their lives. Their willingness was genuine and expressed congruently and convincingly.

Recently, the applications of experiential psychotherapy of unification emerged into a theory of human functioning and evolution through the Ego–Self axis (Mitrofan, 2004). The main idea is that there are many roles existing in the unconscious thesaurus, some of them as vulnerabilities and some as resources, depending on the actual situation. Evolution also means accessing and developing the proper role in life situations by conscious action, and thus enriching the Ego’s action possibilities with minimum energy, or “composing” a new role according to the new situation.

Studies have been published supporting the described sequence of steps of the therapeutic process. Joormann, Teachman, and Gotlib (2009) suggested that not only negative affect makes mood-congruent material (specifically negative memories) more accessible, but also people with a negative disposition recall less accurately positive material. The effects are so strong that they “recall” negative information that did not occur. The authors’ recommendation is that when psychotherapeutic programs are conceived, an improvement of the affective state should be achieved and only afterward a cognitive intervention should be attempted. Trying to work directly on problematic life events might result in the alteration of life history as it was, especially when some confusion is involved (Dixon & Vasilescu, 2011). Experiential psychotherapy of unification often, in the initial phase, uses creative meditation, which creates conditions to deal with the grief that goes beyond the Ego’s abilities to manage (Schaub, 1996), and only afterward it establishes the connection with previous experiences, supporting their reprocessing (Mitrofan, 2004, 2012; Răban-Motounu, 2010). Symbolic actions and metaphors create conditions for childhood traumas to be accessed by stimulating projections and analogies, especially during group work. In a deep connection with the person, the psychotherapist offers support in self-exploration so that new meanings arise, leading to new behavioral answers, encouraging personal growth in a purely humanistic manner, although integrating some psychodynamic concepts. Meditation, corporeal focalization, and awareness are also used by Welwood (2006) for psychotherapy and for personal growth in connection with psychological analysis. It may be considered a way of showing unconditional positive regard to the person, who has suffered, by avoiding unnecessary additional pain, by gently and courageously approaching themes or experiences in the process of extending self-image and self-acceptance. In experiential psychotherapy of unification, creative group meditation and symbolic play are used for the effects of the development of the human consciousness, also highlighted by Wilber (1982).

This article is only a brief introduction to experiential psychotherapy of unification, as well as an invitation for other humanistic psychologists to become familiar with it. These general aspects needed to be clarified so that reports of its efficiency or mechanisms have a reference point. It is also important to integrate it where it belongs because it is an original development of humanistic psychotherapies in the Romanian cultural context that can be easily adapted to other cultures, because the psychotherapeutic process has support mainly from culturally independent theories.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Carol Humphreys, PhD who served as Editorial Consultant on this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Nicoleta Răban-Motounu, PhD, is a university lecturer at the University of Piteşti, Department of Psychology and Communication Sciences. She teaches courses and practical lessons of Introduction to Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Clinical Psychology, Health Psychology, and Psychosomatics for psychology undergraduate students and in the Clinical Psychology master’s program. She has a master’s degree in psychotherapy and psychological assessment and is a certified specialist in experiential psychotherapy, especially experiential psychotherapy of unification. Her doctoral thesis was focused on the effects of experiential psychotherapy of unification in young adults with depression.

References

Adams

W. W.

(2010). Basho’s therapy for Narcissus: Nature as intimate other and transpersonal self. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 50, 38-64. doi:10.1177/0022167809338316

Bageant

(2012). The Hakomi method: Defining its place within the humanistic psychology tradition. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 52, 178-189. doi:10.1177/0022167811423313

Berger

(2010). Nature therapy: Thoughts about the limitations of practice. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 50, 65-76. doi:10.1177/0022167809333999

Chevalier

Gheerbrant

(1994). Dicţionar de simboluri [Dictionary of symbols]. Bucharest, Romania: Artemis.

Connolly

(2011). Healing the wounds of our fathers: Intergenerational trauma, memory, symbolization and narrative. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 56, 607-626. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5922.2011.01936.x

Dixon

Vasilescu

I. P.

(2011). The truth in believing a lie: False memories. Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, 14(1/53), 22-32.

Eliade

(2006). Arta de a muri [The art of dying]. Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Eikon.

Harkness

K. L.

Stewart

J. G.

(2009). Symptom specificity and the prospective generation of life events in adolescence. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 278-287. doi:10.1037/a0015749

Joormann

Teachman

B. A.

Gotlib

I. H.

(2009). Sadder and less accurate? False memory for negative material in depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 412-417. doi:10.1037/a0015621

10.

Jung

C. G.

(1994). Puterea sufletului. Antologie (Vol. 4) [The power of soul. Anthology]. Bucharest, Romania: Three.

11.

Jung

C. G.

(1996). Personalitate şi transfer [The psychology of the transference]. Bucharest, Romania: Teora.

12.

Jung

C. G.

(1998). Psihologie şi alchimie [Psychology and alchemy]. Bucharest, Romania: Teora.

13.

Jung

C. G.

(1999). Studii despre reprezentările alchimice [Alchemical studies]. Bucharest, Romania: Teora.

14.

Jung

C. G.

(2000). Mysterium coniunctionis (Vols. 1 & 2) [The mystery of the union]. Bucharest, Romania: Teora.

15.

Jung

C. G.

(2003). Arhetipurile şi inconştientul colectiv [The archetypes and the collective unconscious]. Bucharest, Romania: Three.

16.

Jung

C. G.

(2005). Aion. Contribuţii la simbolistica Sinelui [Aion. Researches into the phenomenology of the self]. Bucharest, Romania: Three.

17.

Kurtz

Minton

(1997). Essentials of Hakomi body-centered psychotherapy. In Caldwell

(Ed.), Getting in touch: The guide to new body-centered therapies (pp. 45-59). Wheaton, IL: Theosophical.

18.

Lebow

(2006). Research for the psychotherapist: From science to practice. New York, NY: Routledge.

19.

Mergenthaler

(2008). Resonating minds: A school-independent theoretical conception and its empirical application to psychotherapeutic processes. Psychotherapy Research, 18, 109-126. doi:10.1080/10503300701883741

20.

Mitrofan

(2000). Orientarea experienţială în psihoterapie [Experiential orientation in psychotherapy]. Bucharest, Romania: Romanian Society of Experiential Psychotherapy.

21.

Mitrofan

(2004). Terapia unificării. Abordare holistică a dezvoltării şi a transformării umane [Unification psychotherapy. Holistic approach of the human development and transformation]. Bucharest, Romania: Romanian Society of Experiential Psychotherapy.

22.

Mitrofan

(2012). PEU method in clinical psychology, personal development and education: Theoretical and methodological characteristics, validation, applied domains. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 33, 40-44. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.01.079

23.

Mitrofan

Nuţă

(1999). Jocurile conştienţei sau terapia unificării [Games of consciousness or therapy of unification]. Bucharest, Romania: Romanian Society of Experiential Psychotherapy.

24.

Mitrofan

Stoica

C. D.

(2005). Analiza trangeneraţională în terapia unificării [Transgenerational analysis in psychotherapy of unification]. Bucharest, Romania: Romanian Society of Experiential Psychotherapy.

25.

Motschnig-Pitrik

Barrett-Lennard

(2010). Co-actualization: a new construct in understanding well-functioning relationships. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 50, 374-398. doi:10.1177/0022167809348017

26.

Răban-Motounu

(2010). Mechanisms involved in group or individual unification psychotherapy with persons with depressive disorder. Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, 13, 43-47.

27.

Răban-Motounu

(2011). Individual experiential psychotherapy of unification for treatment of depression. Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, 14(2), 23-29.

28.

Radtke

K. M.

Ruf

Gunter

H. M.

Dohrmann

Schauer

Meyer

Elbert

(2011). Transgenerational impact of intimate partner violence on methylation in promoter of the glucocorticoid receptor. Translational Psychiatry, 1, 1-6. doi:10.1038/tp.2011.21

29.

Rogers

C. R.

(1951). Client-centered psychotherapy: Its current practice, implications and theory. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

30.

Rogers

C. R.

(2007). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 44, 240-248. doi:10.1037/0033-3204.44.3.240

31.

Schaub

(1996). Meditation, adult development and health. Part II. Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine, 2, 61-68. doi:10.1177/153321019600200111

32.

Sharma

(2011). Carrying forward: Explicating Gendlin’s experiential phenomenological philosophy and its influence on humanistic psychotherapy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 51, 172-194. doi:10.1177/0022167810363919

33.

Welwood

(1982). Unfolding of experience: Psychotherapy and beyond. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22, 91-104. doi:10.1177/0022167882221006

34.

Welwood

(2006). Psihologia trezirii. Budismul, psihoterapia şi calea transformării personale şi spirituale [Toward a psychology of awakening: buddhism, psychotherapy, and the path of personal and spiritual transformation]. Bucharest, Romania: Elena Francisc.

35.

Wilber

(1982). Oddysey: A personal inquiry into humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22, 57-90. doi:10.1177/0022167882221005

36.

Wilber

(2005). Fără graniţe. Abordări orientale şi occidentale ale dezvoltării personale [No boundary]. Bucharest, Romania: Elena Francisc.