Introduction to Constructivism for Psychotherapists

Psychotherapy and constructivism

Abstract

Constructivism, which represents a radical innovation in theories of knowing, encompases all theories that hold a basic premise: a human being is a thinking subject who himself constructs his knowledge about the world and which is therefore not determined by the outer reality. The theoretical foundation of constructivism is transdisciplinary and as such is a product of interactions between related ideas from different areas of human knowledge. It is not a monolithic theory but it includes a whole spectrum of various concepts. It is relevant for psychotherapy since it can be seen as a possible basis from which we could reconstruct the objectivistic understanding of psychotherapy. This article shows the most important theoretical paradigms of constructivism, its origins in the history of ideas and the range of the various forms it takes.