AUTHOR=Paoli Bernardo 

TITLE=Therapeutic aphorisms for paranoid personality disorder and paranoid ideation treatment: psychological opposites and complementaries in brief therapy

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1278721

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1278721

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Background: In Brief Therapy (BT), aphorisms (As) have been considered a privileged element in therapeutic language; with a handful of words they arouse emotions and different perspectives.
Theoretical proposal: In As, a specific structure - the implicit or explicit Symmetry of Opposites (SoO) - allows a surprise effect, which in turn allows a therapeutic effect. Therefore, a carefully selected SoO (based on psychological complementaries) allows the desired therapeutic reframing, that can be identified as a core goal of the psychotherapeutic intervention.
Research question: Is it possible to identify As with a therapeutic value in treating Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) and high Paranoid Ideation (hPI) cases?
Method: Starting from an initial collection of 369 original As created on the spot in 2,335 BT sessions, As used during on-line psychotherapy on 55 patients with PPD and/or an hPI measured with the SCL-90-R were identified.
Results: 33 As were selected and organised according to effective and ineffective strategies, target of the BT intervention for PPD and hPI cases.