ON PSYCHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES
They're valuable psychological prosthetic tools...
I'm not a fan of techniques in the psychotherapy business. I'm unduly suspicious of them. They make me jittery. They make me feel like a hack, incompetent, and phoney. And if you countered that perhaps it's because I'm not very skilled in using them, you'll be right. I'm terrible!!!
However, I'm gradually realizing one vital value of technique-based interventions in psychotherapy. They're valuable as psychological prosthetic tools. Here's what I mean.
People who are psychologically healthy are often naturally adept at using most of the soft skills associated with mental health. Assertiveness, acceptance, mindfulness, managing expectations, prioritizing, relaxation, scheduling, problem-solving, asking for help, admitting fault, exercising, setting boundaries, etc. Most of these things come naturally to me (and many people) that I was never aware that I was using a technique. There are many more people that these skills don't come naturally to. They struggle and find them even painful and are often judged, criticized or advised by those who don't struggle at all with these things.
Insight building is a vital and legitimate therapeutic goal, but it has a ceiling in its therapeutic utility. Ordinarily, the attainment of insight should propel an individual to implementing the self-evident changes made apparent by virtue of the insight gained. But the faculty needed or used in working out insight is quite different from that needed in implementing change. This is one of the reasons (if not the major one) why insight doesn't always equal change/healing. In fact, in and out of the psychotherapy space, there are people who are painfully trapped in insight - they know why/what is causing/maintaining their problems, but they're unable to execute their way out of it.
It's precisely in scenarios like these that techniques become a useful and powerful tool for helping people handicapped in certain psychological domains to achieve functional parity with their more capable fellows. Also, there're people for whom psychological insight don't come naturally. Such people also benefit from techniques such as the use of analogies, imagery, metaphors, comparison, role switching, perspective swapping, story telling, guided imagination etc.
The problem arises when techniques become the therapy rather than an aid to it. Like I said, it's at best a prosthetic that ought to be prescribed/used for the right persons, in the right context, in the right measure, for the right duration. Some people are meant to use a prosthetic permanently, some only temporarily. It should depend on the nature and severity of the functional handicap.
I may be adept at applying techniques to myself, but I'm terrible at prescribing or applying them to others. I think I'm working on this...