Bellak, L and Small, L (1980) Brief and emergency psychotherapy , Mexico:

Pax.

First part. Basic principles and methods.

I. The role of Brief and Emergency Psychotherapies.

-Brief psychotherapy is limited to a few treatment sessions in which specific
techniques are used to achieve a specific therapeutic goal .
Brece psychotherapy can be applied to any kind of emotional problem.
In brief psychotherapy and emergency psychotherapy the same principles apply;
some specific ones pertain to the nature of the emergency that will dictate the
conceptualization used and the activity of the therapist.
-There are no basic theoretical and conceptual differences between crisis
intervention and emergency psychotherapy.

The needs of the individual .

-Most people show up for psychotherapy only in moments of crisis; Once this
trance is overcome, the motivation to continue exploring the problems more deeply
disappears. Every psychotherapist has the obligation to care for a person to the
best of their ability, taking into account the limitations of their motivations and their
accessibility for psychotherapeutic intervention.

-Brece psychotherapy applied in situations other than those of a crisis has

advantages:
a) Avoid dependence on long-term therapy
b) Treatment in abbreviated form, with some relief to an acute disturbance, can
prevent its chronic appearance.
c) You can avoid life circumstances that tend to become harmful elements.
d) If brief therapy is available in an acute disturbance, it will probably be much
more efficient than any other treatment initiated after the repetition has had its
effect.
e) lower cost.

Crisis intervention and brief and emergency psychotherapy.

-Although crisis intervention may be initiated with the purpose of returning the
patient to the premorbid level, it may be difficult to limit or block the possibility that
the patient could spontaneously reach higher levels of adaptation. For many
people, the nature of knowledge makes this almost automatic.
-Neurotic and even psychotic symptomatology, in response to traumatic situations,
follow a very similar pattern. Many symptoms are attempts to adapt and solve the
problem, which are successful to varying degrees and can leave the individual
stronger than before the traumatic situation occurred.

Therapy in five sessions, basic models.

It is based on the need to accommodate therapy to their true probability of
assistance. Community mental health should be considered as an aspect of public
health and preventive medicine. Brief therapy has a role to play in all three phases
of public health: primary, secondary and tertiary prevention.
a) Primary prevention : It focuses on treating the emergence of problems or
situations that can lead to the disease if the conditions that cause them
are encouraged. This prevention will alter situations to reduce the
likelihood of psychopathology arising.
b) Secondary prevention: This is where brisk and emergency
psychotherapies play their most conventional role, treating acute
problems and crises to prevent them from becoming chronic.
c) Tertiary prevention: Help for the treatment of acute exacerbations of
chronic psychosis. It helps keep psychotics reasonably adjusted to the
community rather than necessitating repeated hospitalization.
-The effectiveness of Brece psychotherapy derives from the clarity of
conceptualization necessary for its practice.
-Brief psychotherapy is not a second-order intervention, as it can be effective in
different institutional settings and is often the best treatment to choose.

II. Definitions, Theories and Principles of Brief Psychotherapy.

This approach to brief, emergency psychotherapy is largely derived from the theory
and practice of psychoanalysis.

What is psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a process that includes ignorance, learning and relearning. We
are the product of our cognitive past.
We bring our biological Anlage –beginning, beginning (embryology)- that has a
structuring effect on the way we record, save and rescue our experiences.
-Dynamic psychotherapy is concerned with understanding the effect that specific
life experiences have on the human organism. It attempts to understand the
accumulated perceptual mass that affects contemporary perception; It also tries to
unravel or modify past perceptions that, having been poorly adapted, tend to affect
current feelings and behaviors, and the responses derived from them. Distortions
of the past are restructured through the alliance of the patient's intact self and the
theoretical and human role of the therapist.
-The acquisition of the individual's perceptual mass is a complicated process.