Theoretical Orientation

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Theoretical Orientation

Dr Garry L. Landreth, Founder & Director Emeritus - Center for Play Therapy, UNT, USA and Dr Renuka Dutta.

Dr. Renuka works from different theoretical perspectives to meet the diverse needs of her clients. Theories that strongly influence her practice include Humanistic Theory and Relational Frame Theory (RFT).

Humanistic Theory – Carl Rogers was an American Psychologist and the founder of the Humanistic or Person-Centered approach. He argued that every person is capable of growth and change when offered the required facilitative conditions continuously over a period of time. According to this therapy, people do not come to therapy to fix themselves, instead the therapeutic relationship is such that it helps the client to take part in profound self-exploration.

Virginia Axline’s therapeutic model paralleled Roger’s theoretical orientation emphasizing the necessity for non-judgmental listening and acceptance of clients if they were to change. According to Axline, child-centered play therapy focused on the child and not the presenting problem. Like Rogers, she promoted a therapeutic relationship

based on genuineness, authenticity, unconditional positive regard, along with acceptance and empathic understanding of the client in order to support psychological development and growth.

Dr. Dutta has been trained to use these principles with children in play therapy sessions. Play therapy is a type of developmental intervention designed to help children grow up well-adjusted. This therapy is offered to children in a quiet, private space with carefully chosen art materials and toys in a playroom.

Dr Renuka has had the privilege of being trained and supervised by Dr. Garry Landreth (pioneer in the development & refinement of the child-centered play therapy approach) when she was formally invited as a visiting scholar to the Center for Play Therapy at the University of North Texas, USA.

Dr Dutta has been creatively using many online Play Therapy Interventions during and post Covid.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) – RFT is a cohesive theory of human language and cognition based on contextual relationships developed by Dr. Steven C. Hayes, an American Clinical Psychologist (Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada’s Behaviour Analysis Program) .

According to RFT some properties of the language can create and promote suffering. Sometimes when people get stressed or experience pain they get caught in certain thoughts and emotions in such a way that the emotion starts dictating their life. Human suffering is created by human ability to create bidirectional links between things. Humans are able to respond relationally to words, images and concepts.

An individual is told that the tool that s/he is using to write is called a pen. Next time s/he looks at or uses something similar they will start to refer to it as a pen. If a pen was gifted to him or her by their grandparent who just passed away, looking at the pen can trigger memories of the loss and evoke verbal relations.

Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) is deeply rooted in RFT. Through ACT intervention, clients begin to understand the role language is playing in creating their suffering and they then learn to stay in a relationship with their difficult thoughts and feelings, rather than identifying or becoming enmeshed with them. There are six core processes of ACT that apply the theories and findings of RFT to changing client’s thought and language patterns.

Acceptance and Commitment therapy is a third wave approach and is viewed as a more updated version of CBT that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behaviour change strategies to increase psychological flexibility.

Employee Assistance Program ( EAP)

Employee assistance program is a benefit program to help employees deal with work place stress and/or personal problems. This program is structured in a way that it feels safe and comfortable for employees to express themselves.

Working with a workplace training program based on Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT), the psychologist offers organizational consultation through EAP within different organizations. These organizations include Local Companies, Multi-national Companies (MNCs), International School’s and Start-ups. This is offered to organizations of any size.

Workplace situations can create a number of psychological challenges such as anxiety, depression, feeling tired, having nightmares, persistent psychological pain that causes difficulty adjusting, sleep disturbances, problems concentrating, feeling of unfairness and anger, a feeling of tearfulness and emotional instability, and lack of motivation.

Below is a list of services you could choose from :

When supported in such a caring way, employees begin to appreciate the workplace.

Plans can be customized to fit the needs of your organization and if you have any queries related to the same, do contact me.

Psycho-educational Assessment

Psychoeducational testing is a specialized assessment that can be requested by a parent or by the school. It is a systematic study of different areas of functioning of a child or an adolescent that provides a clearer picture of their learning and behavioural profile. Such assessments are requested to gain diagnostic clarity and meet the primary or secondary school’s requirement to also generate an IEPs.

The assessment process involves the following steps:

First Consultation with the parent
Identifying target areas for assessment
Tests are chosen from a range of normed instruments
Assessment sessions are undertaken with the child/teen
Generating a comprehensive report
Explaining the report to the parents, brief feedback to the child/teen

These comprehensive reports are either simply used to enhance understanding of a child or teen’s current strengths and areas of concern or else to consider the recommendations listed by the psychologist for provisions and modifications to be made within the classroom or during examinations as recognized by CBSE and IGCSE boards.

Success for individuals with specific needs is in helping them find and enhance their strengths and talents and not just in identifying the ‘problem’ areas.

If you wish to gain more information about such an assessment for your child or teen, please do contact me.