Susanna Mittermaier
Founder of Pragmatic Psychology, Austria
Title: Pragmatic Psychology- How do we make psychology more realistic to people
Biography
Biography: Susanna Mittermaier
Abstract
Psychology used to be the study of knowledge, the study of how people function and the value of it and the curiosity and exploration of possibilities. Nowadays psychology is the study of behavior and about the categorization of what is sane and what is insane.
What if psychology could be a place of possibility and the beginning of sanity rather than an exile for those who do not fit?
Where do we start?
By being realistic, realistic means the ability to see things as they are and dealing with them in a pragmatic way.
Seeing what it requires asking questions.
What are the things we call problems and disabilities? Are they disabilities or maybe even abilities? What abilities are hiding behind disabilities? Asking questions is pragmatic.
“Pragmatic” means doing what works. What works is asking for the possibilities in the seemingly impossible.
The target with Pragmatic Psychology is to empower clients to access their abilities rather than focusing on their problems. Pragmatic Psychology is about what can be created when life is no longer about controlling behavior. Every problem becomes a possibility to change your life. How? Questions and tools to empower the client to know what they know and to discover the abilities behind the limitations
Questions empower the client to look for new ways out of their situation; an answer only confirms the rightness of the limitation. Pragmatic Psychology empowers the client to create their own pragmatic way beyond the problem.
Results: ADHD patients being able to use their hyperactivity as a resource to create their lives. Depression and anxiety being discovered as extreme awareness that no longer, being overwhelming and having to be defended against, can be used as a source of creation. Patients coming for anger management discovering their potency that was covered by their label. PTSD ceasing to haunt clients and the potency slumbering all those years behind the victimizing story being accessed. Autism being acknowledged as a highly interactive and communicative group of people.
Problems and diagnoses being possibilities and abilities rather than limitations. What if having to have problems was no longer the paradigm to live by in our society? What if our past no longer determines our future but can be created and chosen as desired in every moment? Time to create a different point of view on all standard diagnoses and to focus on abilities and diversity? Time to have psychology is the gift it can?