736 – Love and Dislove - The Central Challenge in Psychotherapy

Abstract

Six out of ten top stressful live events (Homes and Rahe) involve loving closeness - either lost or gained. Some 80% of marriages that started with much love and happiness end in unhappiness, mutual hostility (Dislove), stalemate, separation, and divorce. This striking fact can only be explained by understanding that closeness (driven by Love) provokes defense (Dislove) as closeness exceeds one's ‘threshold of tolerance. Lifetrack therapy offers visual tracking of Love and Dislove allowing accurate daily tracking of dynaic mental state and subtle changes in personality, based on couples’ daily subjective self-rating on 41 parameters.

Lifetrack daily trackiong clearly shows that escalating closeness (driven by Love) provokes waves of defense (Dislove) causing setbacks. However, through therapy guided by the couples’ daily self-rating graphs, defense (Dislove) can be weakened by exhaustion, with Love (closeness) becoming liberated from accompanying Dislove (defense), achieving ‘Breakthrough Intimacy’- closeness far greater than the couples' previous maximum experiences.

Of 224 patients with borderline personality disorder, among the most defensive with strongest Dislove thus most challenging, 70% reached or exceeded their previous maximum levels of adjustment overall, with patients treated with partners doing 10 times better than those treated without partners. 50% of BPD patients went through complete or near complete personality transformation without medications.

Lifetrack therapy experience confirms that psychiatric symptoms of distress has much to do with ‘Love and Dislove’ and that when Love wins over Dislove through therapy, the patients undergo personality transformation with dramatically improved threshold of tolerance of challenges in life overall.