Life-review interventions as psychotherapeutic techniques in psychotraumatology

Abstract

Life-review interventions (LRI) are psychotherapeutic techniques originally derived from gerontology, which can be distinguished from other biographical and reminiscing techniques. They have been systematically implemented and investigated not only in elderly clients with depression, cognitive decline, in oncology units and in hospices but also in adolescents with various mental problems. LRI are mainly based on the elaboration of the autobiographical memory as well as on personal identity consolidation. This bears the potential for the systematic introduction, use, and evaluation of LRI within the field of psychotraumatology. This article gives a general overview and outlines a structured LRI by means of a case example of a World War II-traumatised patient. Other applications and implementations of LRI in psychotraumatology and other related areas are presented. So far, only uncontrolled or controlled LRI case studies have been investigated with traumatized samples. The importance of further randomized controlled studies is emphasized.