ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the factors that work together in making choices possible and in governing the clients' interaction with reality: Education, genetic, factors, context, experience and creativity. Freedom of choice is the basis of psychological health: When one loses the freedom to choose, one acts and reacts in a pathological way. Therapy has to widen the scope of semantic and pragmatic choices. Exterior changes can happen in the client's reality or can be induced by a therapeutic system. The mandate of the therapist in the Bruges Model is to co-create (with the clients) a context in which the clients will feel able to make a therapeutic change and to help the clients to see more clearly what they want (their goals) and to focus away from what they do not want. In cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitions, emotions, and behavior are described as influencing each other. The chapter presents case examples to illustrate cognitive behavioral therapy of habits.