Integrating Visions of Reality: Interpersonal Diagnosis and the Existential Vision

The visions of reality underlying psychotherapeutic schools are considered as congnitive structures, and Leary's interpersonal diagnosis model is employed to systematize previously discussed visions and to generate additional visions. This serves to identify commonalities among therapeutic world views, intervention styles, personality patterns, and types of psychopathology and to further psychotherapy integration by stressing the need for flexibility as the therapist offers each client a re-vision of his or her experienced reality. Every individual is ultimately responsible for choosing his or her own "reality" and the identity that is embedded in it. Promoting self-direction and flexibility by enhancing awareness of these existential choices is at the core of therapeutic effectiveness and is fostered through metacommunication and beneficial challenge to the client's constructs.