APPLICATIONS OF COMPANIONSHIP THERAPY MODEL

For the practicing psychotherapist, Companionship Therapy suggests ways in which the therapist’s role may be expanded. Traditional practitioners seem excessively role-bound by a number of now arbitrary anachronisms: the fifty-minute hour, the formal office setting, professional distance, and circumscribed notions of what client activities are therapeutic. Hopefully, the companionship model will provide an impetus towards a therapeutic repertoire of greater breadth and flexibility from a broader perspective, Companionship Therapy is an example of the trend toward de-professionalizing mental health delivery, which Sobey (1970) has aptly labeled “the non-professional revolution.” Companionship and similar programs are proliferating. Various formats have been used: interracial pairs, elderly pairs, college students with chronic mental patients, and such crossage pairings as high school students with younger children, and parent-child dyads. A current direction is to train preexisting pairings — couples, friendships, and working relationships — in interpersonal skills. This capitalizes on an already existing companionship, adding a training ingredient to further the therapy component .