Features of Pathogenic Beliefs in the Context of Childhood Maltreatment: Implications for Therapeutic Empathy

ABSTRACT

One reason why patients may seek therapy is to address constricting beliefs about themselves, others and the world that diminish the quality of their lives. These pathogenic beliefs interfere with the pursuit of personal goals and are often the source of considerable distress. In this paper, we discuss the perspective from Control-Mastery Theory that such beliefs were once adaptive in the context of earlier traumatic relational experience, and are often held in place by loyalties and attachment ties to important figures. Therapists can facilitate patients’ efforts to disconfirm these beliefs by empathically understanding the form and function of the patient’s pathogenic beliefs historically and in the present. Such understanding is termed “person empathy” and is found to contribute to positive therapeutic outcomes. With the aim of helping to facilitate therapists’ empathy regarding patients’ pathogenic beliefs, we describe in this paper some of the original functions and subsequent consequences of such beliefs in patients’ lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychotherapy process
• pathogenic beliefs
• case study
• control-mastery theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Case reports in this paper are composites of real case examples with information changed to maintain the patients confidentiality. The authors took liberty to adjust some facts in the patient’s histories to best illustrate the point. These adjustments did not compromise the external validity of these descriptions.