Supportive Therapy Techniques

Finding defenses is extremely important, regardless of the therapeutic approach. What you should do once you detect defenses, however, varies. If people also present severe deficiencies in abstraction, integration, or basic trust, it’s usually best to use supportive techniques in treating them (Stewart & Levine, 1967; Blackman, 1994). This chapter concerns supportive techniques based on analytic theories, some involving defenses.