ABSTRACT
The importance of Disciplined Personal Involvement (DPI) in Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) is illustrated in the Interpersonal Discrimination exercise (IDE). The major goal of the IDE is to create a dyadic safety zone by helping patients acquire a clear discrimination between the person of the clinician and maltreating significant others. The IDE examples demonstrate how CBASP practitioners, using the IDE, teach patients to discriminate between the person of the therapist and significant others who have hurt them. The Significant Other History (SOH) allows practitioners to pinpoint the major interpersonal fear that patients bring to the dyadic relationship, and, through repeated discrimination trials with the IDE, patients acquire the ability to tell the difference between the behavior of their significant others and the psychotherapist. The situational context is labeled hot because of the past history of the patient with one or more significant others and hot spot domains offer occasions when clinicians make interpersonal discriminations.
