Status Dynamic Psychotherapy

Status dynamic psychotherapy (SDT) is an approach to psychotherapy that focuses on changing a client's career-related, personal or social "statuses." It is characterized by its lack of focus on factors traditionally targeted by psychotherapy, such as a client's behaviors, cognitions, and how unconscious factors come into play, and was created by Peter G. Ossorio at the University of Colorado in the late 1960s as part of a larger system known as descriptive psychology. Its proponents maintain that this emphasis does not conflict with other schools of therapy, that status dynamic ideas can be used alongside them in an integrated way, and that the approach expands rather than replaces a therapist's repertoire of explanations and clinical interventions.