As a psychologist whose practice is both academic and clinical, my research in psychotherapy outcomes has been organized around the therapeutic practice of Psychological Mentoring and in two distinct ways. First, in my academic roles Psychological Mentoring has to do with educating the next generation of psychologists so that they have a variety of skills to manage the enormous volume of complexity that is found in working with human beings. In academic psychological mentoring, I feel a responsibility to my students’ future patients. Knowing that my students are equipped with a healthy appreciation for the unfathomable complexity of human experience and how to manage that complexity in empathic and creative methods that serves the greater good. That is the way academic psychological mentoring proceeds.
Therapeutic Psychological Mentoring is a creative process anchored in the mythology of the hero’s journey, the young persons successful transition into adulthood. We see such a mythology depicted in the movies such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, & The Karate Kid (just to name a few). In many years of clinical practice, what I most often see is the human experience of having become profoundly stuck in the process of making the transition to mature adulthood. This stuckness can take many forms but overall what happens is the person cannot seem to get on track with their life in a way that feels satisfying to them, and which is perceived by others close to them as an appropriate path for them to fulfill their unique potential.
I use the term “mature adulthood” in order to describe psychologically mature adulthood as discrete from and an evolution of what we popularly refer to as adulthood. The popular notion of adulthood is, in fact, a fairly simple construct that has its footing in the ability to access certain rights: the right to consume alcohol, to consume tobacco products, to vote, to access lines of credit, etc. The popular understanding of adulthood also has to do with services requirements, most of which are voluntary, such as: service in the military and participation in local community activities. What more, the popular understandings of adulthood emphasize certain roles, such as: independent living, successful financial management, domestic partnership or marriage, and the transition to father/motherhood. Though much is implied in this short list, it’s remarkable to see that the emphasis in the popular culture has less to do with the psychological processes implied in entering into mature adulthood and often has to do with biological markers, as in, ‘now your 18 so your an adult.’ What’s emphasized here is the biological marker and not the psychological process. And it’s often the case that being 18 and being ready to tackle the challenges of adulthood are completely out of sink.
Psychological Mentoring is intentional in looking at the psychological process that gives the person the solid footing to successfully navigate the stresses, challenges, and transitions that are naturally implied in development into mature adulthood. What I’ve been seeing for many years now in clinical practice with children and adolescents is large groups of children and adolescents whose experience emphasizes the biological markers and de-emphasizes the importance of the psychological process that is the core component for the successful management of their life in all its complexity. Equally so, what were seeing with adults is often biological adults, adult by fact of their age; but whom are psychologically locked into childhood or adolescent patterns that often have the effect of undoing their attempts at successfully managing the challenges of adult living. Adults in this situation are particularly challenged because everything in their life says “act your age”, “grow up”, “just do it”, and yet their often stuck, overwhelmed, unsure, unsafe, dis-empowered, feel unable to make sense of the simple ways they could help their own lives. What more, there is a cascade effect for such feelings, in which what first begins as feeling overwhelmed eventually becomes clinical depression or an anxiety disorder, a severe relationship complex, in which the person begins to turn on themselves. We see vegetative problems in that there are changes in sleep patterns, a change in eating habits, lack of exercise, withdrawal from friends and loved ones, with the level of severity often increasing in proportion to the length of time in which one has felt unable to cope with the demands of adulthood.
In my work as a psychologist, I regularly find myself in this kind of complex work & I have been impressed with how even the most unusual of problems in living can have as its nucleus inadequate preparation for mature adulthood. At PsychotherapyWorks our attitude towards this problem is that the problem can be solved, that the questions posed by our problems in coming to mature adulthood are important markers for development, that the fact of their being a problem implies an answer & that by answering such questions one naturally enters into the process of preparing to enter into mature adulthood.
And the method in which the questions about mature adulthood are answered is mentoring. Mentoring has many qualities, first of which is its empirical footing. In my work with graduate students we have seen over and again, that the mentoring process delivers in terms of helping individuals both recover from diagnosed medical conditions such as anxiety and depression, but also in terms of getting on track with their lives in a way that makes sense and provides personal meaning and satisfaction in their living. Self-report measures at the close of treatment have demonstrated the clinical efficacy of mentoring interventions over a 28 week period in which there was 1-2 times weekly outpatient sessions for children, adolescents, adults, and couples. Overall, the data is clear: Psychological Mentoring Works.
In our actual clinical practice, what makes Psychological Mentoring work is the relationship between the psychologist and the client. At PsychotherapyWorks we are committed to modes of relationship that meet the client’s needs. We are not about the business of deploying a “traditional” psychotherapy method in treatment. The idea of an analyst sitting quietly, taking notes, is not what were about. Psychological Mentoring implies the development of a real relationship with the client, where the client’s primary ways of concerting are often the way in which the therapist will connect with the person in the treatment. It’s not unusual to see Dr. Kothari playing a game of catch with a young man, taking a walk in the gardens or the surrounding neighborhoods or parks that are part of the beautiful landscape for the setting for the mentoring process, sitting by a local stream and talking with a young man about his life and the ways he can make his life come alive in ways that make sense to him.
Certainly Psychological Mentoring is not our only methodology. In fact we at PsychotherapyWorks are grounded in a number of empirically validated treatment methods. However, what we have found is that a core component of almost all of these treatment models is some type of Psychological Mentoring. That said, when Dr. Kothari works behaviorally with children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD, we do both the behavioral work, the social skills training, the focus and attentional training, but we are also building the relationship with Mentoring so that the behavioral and skills training work is even more effective. Overall, this method of working on Mentoring in therapeutic work has been significantly rewarding and is a remarkable psychological tool for facilitating the development of mature adulthood.
Finally, if you have any quetions or comments we invite you to share them and we will certainly respond.
