Psychotherapists’ primary time-honored paths to change have been through modifying their clients’ behaviors, cognitions, insights into unconscious factors, and patterns of interaction with significant others. Status dynamic psychotherapy (SDP) presents a further—and complementary—therapeutic option: that of bringing about changes in clients’ statuses, which, as employed in SDP, means relational position or place.

Historical Context

Status dynamics is the creation of Peter Ossorio (1926–2007), professor of psychology at the University of Colorado. It represents the clinical applications of his much larger system, descriptive psychology, which was originally formulated in the late 1960s and developed continually since that time. An extremely broad range framework, descriptive psychology has been applied to psychotherapeutic practice and to a wide array of clinical problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and eating disorders. ...

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