Monday 15 December 2008

Implications of PCT....

The implications of PCT in psychological distress are :-
1) The conflicts are internally and individually resolved
2) The conflicts are discussed in present
3) Knowing the historical background is not as effective as knowing the present situtaion and emotions at present in undersatnding and resolving any conflict.
4) An indiviual willingness to share comforatbly and openely that he /she is undergoing , his/her emotions , feelings with the therapist acclerates the process of therapy and increases the probablity of a successful therapy.
5) Bringing the conflicts to an invidual's awareness and consciousness plays a vital role in distress resolution.

Thus PCT model in psychological distress is very challenging and rewarding.

How MOL works...

The purpose of MOl is to focus on present....It helps an individual exploring what he/she is undergoing at the moment or in presnt rather than talking about what went wrong or what would/could be wrong. It encourages him/her to express the thoughts/feelings and emotions that is causing distress, irriation in him/her and regulating his behaviour. So MOL does not demand for a behavioural change or changing maladaptive pattern from an individual. Rather it focusses on individula's present state of behaviour and helps him/her to redirect /reorgainze his control system by bringing back his/her awareness.
So the task of an individual in MOL sessions is simply to describe what they are aware of happening in their mind and exercising one's imagination is nt necessary for resolving conflict.This is how an indvidual reaches to a point of view from which they can genrate their own solutions to the toubles thay are in. So for this in an MOL session , it is very importnat that an individual just has to feel comfortable in expressing his emotions and thoughts that he/she is undergoing at the moment. In that case the therapy works really fast and a fast solution is reached. Otherwise if the individual is not comfortable with the thearpist, it would take longer time for him/her to bring things to his/her awareness which can cause delay in reorganisation of his thoughts and thus therapy may be delayed.

So in the next section we will be talking about implications of PCT.....

Conflict and Method of level

So i was talking about circumstances under which our perceptual control is thwarted. When perceptual control is hindered it leads to conflict.If this conflict remains tehre for a longer time it causes psychological distress.The next thing to know is how to resolve this conflict when it is genertaed by two control systems acting against each other in same individual. In that case an indvidual has to look for another control system which is stronger and more efficient than these two control systems. This control system exists on a higher position in a hierarchy. There is a process to bring this control system. This process of helping an indvidual to redirect his awareness is called as MOL, method of level. This redirecting helps reorganising control systems in an indiviual which helps him/her to resolve his conflicts on his own.

In the next blog we will see how this MOL works......

Thursday 11 December 2008

The prevention of perceptual control

Human beings performs optimally when they experince what they prefer .When what is experinced differs from what is preferred, action is taken to eliminate the differnce. This is control. This process keeps on happening from birth untill death. But in some istuations this control is prevented or obstructed.It happens:-
a) due to environmental factors like natural calamities when things are nt under our control.
b) When in an individual, control efforts of one control system start acting against control efforts of another control system in order to control incompatible peceptions.for example..if one control system says that i should go out it will make me feel energetic and fresh and the other control system says says i should nt go out due to fear and anxiety...in this situation it will led to conflict....

PCT-Perceptual Control Theory-continued..

Why cant we deny control:-
Our living is sustained due to control in life.Evrything runs due to presence of control..in some or the other form..be it our controlled reactions and emotions which regulate our normal beahviour pattern, the controlled diet which keeps us phyically fit, the controlled use which prevents wastage of anything, the controlled speed of our vechicles avoids any accident to occur and many more such examples are there. So control is an essential part of our life.

But how do we measure it..amount of control
We as human beings have the tendency of keeping predetermined internal standard about anything and evrything. And we tend to match this internal standard with what we see, sense and percieve from the external environment. Thats how we measure the amount of control needed in our life. This happens with us on a very regualr basis. for instance in context of our appearnces ..we set an internal standard...and to make it match with the need that we sense from external sources, we get some new clothes, accessories etc.for ourselves .
If any differnces arise between what we sense and our internal standard, we start putting our efforts to minimise the differnce and avoid any conflicts.

Wednesday 10 December 2008

PCT-Perceptual Control Theory

Problems start erupting in our living when the control system of our life start going beyond our control. In other words, when we fail to achieve what we desire for or when we achieve what we never imagined or thought of, we loose our hold on control. In both the cases certain negative behavioural changes start occuring like irritability, peevishness, restlessness, conflicts etc which result in psychological distress.

This is the outline of Perceptual control theory. Life is control- an uninterrupted process of carrying, regulating and maintaining- a process in which all that is non essential is free to change but all that is essential is restricted to change.