Abintra is a Latin word that means “emanating from within.” We chose this word to name our practice, because we believe that the changes people make during their participation in psychotherapy come from within them. While we serve as guides to help people become aware of their specific roadblocks to achieving good mental health, we believe that the people we serve ultimately do the hard work and make the changes necessary to improve their quality of life.
This is a great question as you make decisions about the types of services you’re interested in pursuing. A psychologist is a licensed professional who has earned a doctoral degree in psychology. A psychologist might hold a doctoral degree in Philosophy (Ph.D.), in Psychology (Psy.D.), or in Education (Ed.D.) The focus of these doctoral degrees is different with a Ph.D. psychologist having scientist-practitioner training, a Psy.D. psychologist focusing on being a practitioner, and an Ed.D. psychologist focusing on assessing and treating difficulties children encounter in the school setting that prevent them from succeeding. Psychologists do not earn their doctoral degrees at a medical school, as a psychiatrist does, but train in university or professional school settings.
After earning a doctoral degree, psychologists often receive additional clinical training before becoming licensed by the state to practice independently. In order to practice psychology or to be called a psychologist in Wyoming, a professional must be licensed by the Wyoming Board of Psychology. Licensure is then maintained by earning 30 additional hours of continuing education every two years.
Psychologists differ from other mental health professionals, such as psychiatrists, social workers or licensed professional counselors (LPC’s), in both education and training and in the focus of the services provided. Psychologists are the only mental health professional licensed to perform psychological evaluations.
Before we begin, you will need to complete some intake forms. You can download those from this website and fill them out before you come to our first meeting, or you can fill those out in person.
For patients seeking treatment, we will spend an hour or two asking lots of questions about your background, your current struggles, what you've done to cope with your struggles, and what you hope to gain from treatment. We will discuss some first impressions of the problem and what treatment, if any, is recommended. If the treatment will be provided to a child, one hour is often spent with the parent/guardian to gather information, and an hour is spent with the child to grasp the child's perspective.
For patients seeking evaluations, we will spend an hour or so discussing the evaluation, your background, and your current struggles. Your psychologist will then administer some psychological tests. In some situations, the entire testing process can be completed in one session. In others, you will need to return for additional testing.
For many reasons, this is a difficult question to answer. The length of any course of psychotherapy depends on the needs of the individual seeking treatment. Some people enter treatment with a specific difficulty or problem to be solved. Under these cicumstances, specific goals are establishd and treatment is completed when the goals are met. Often, with cicumscribed difficulties and goals, treatment can potentially end in eight or ten sessions.
Other individuals enter psychotherapy because they feel bad or are not pleased with the direction their life is headed, but are uncertain about the reasons for their dissatisfaction. In these situations, the length of treatment is less predictable at the start of treatment, but remains under control of the individual. For the uncertain individual, time in therapy is spent identifying and understanding sources of dissatisfaction and the various ways the individual might inadvertently be contributing to the dissatisfaction. Often, relief is found in certain areas of one's life with increasing understanding of the factors contributing to the difficulties. Then, it is up to the individual to decide whether the amount of relief from troubles or progress toward goals meets his or her current needs. If the answer is yes, the individual may decide to stop treatment. Then, the individual may, at some time in the future, come back to pursue other goals. Alternatively, life satisfaction may be improved significantly with the treatment provided such that additional psychotherapy is not needed at any future time.
Other individuals choose lengthier treatments either due to complexities in their life situations or due to a desire for intensive self-exploration. Longer treatments, in addition to the relatively greater strides in symptom alleviation, self-understanding, and increases in life satisfaction, also tend to result in the learning of a process of listening to and understanding oneself that can be applied on one's own without a psychologist and result in therapeutic gains even outside of psychotherapy. Regardless of the circumstances under which an individual enters treatment, the decision about the length of psychotherapeutic treatment is made by the individual in treatment with the assistance of his or her psychologist.
The diversity of decisions about psychological treatment can also be viewed metaphorically by thinking about the number of options individuals have for maintaining their automobiles. Automobiles, like people, require periodic attention to their functioning. However, the way that each individual goes about automobile maintenance differs widely. Some individuals drive their cars without any maintenance, and merely discard or trade in the vehicle after it has served its use. This is similar to the individual who goes through life without any type of psychological treatment, content to and satisfied with his or her ability to handle problems that arise.
Other individuals darken the door of the auto mechanic only when their cars break down and will no longer run without some sort of mechanical repair. We might think of this situation as similar to the individual who seeks psychotherapy when there is a life crisis and only long enough to get through the crisis, at which point the treatment stops. Yet another group of individuals perform periodic oil changes and tune-ups before signs of serious trouble develop. This group of individuals might attend short (eight to ten sessions) to moderate (six months to a year) courses of psychotherapy over their lifetimes after recognizing smaller difficulties that will become worse and more problematic without focused attention, but before a crisis develops.
The final group of car owners meticulously follow the maintenance guidelines that come with their owners’ manual and carefully attend to every detail of keeping the body of the car clean and free from rust. This final group of people might be those who choose longer courses of psychotherapy with a desire to thoroughly understand multiple facets of their psychological functioning and to make decisions that lead to the fullest in life satisfaction. They tend to be individuals who find the process of self-exploration appealing and respect the opportunity to diligently pursue it.
Just as there are infinite possibilities for the way a person can care for his or her automobile, there are an unlimited number of possibilities for the goals that individuals wish to pursue in psychotherapy and the time and monetary investment they wish to make to meet their goals. However, self-exploration and self-understanding are developed with time and effort just as are musical talents, and greater gains result from a greater investment of time and effort.
The short answer is no. Psychologists are trained as scientist-practitioners, and we rely on research and clinical data to inform our conclusions and decisions. Although you may have heard more in the media about the research on cognitive-behavioral therapy, there is actually a solid amount of research supporting psychodynamic therapy as an effective form of treatment. For example, a recent article in the American Psychologist (the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychological Association) cited a number of methodologically-rigorous studies done between 1995 and 2009 that found psychodynamic therapy to be as effective, or more effective, than other forms of treatment. The most interesting finding was that patients who received psychodynamic therapy not only maintained treatment gains, but also continued to improve for years after treatment ended.
