In the case of control-masstery, "case-specific" refers to the fact that a therapist accommodates his or her interventions according to the patient's particular history and present needs. In classical psychoanalysis, on the other hand, there are general rules of therapist conduct, such as the rule of neutrality, that are (mistakenly) presumed to apply to every patient. With control-mastery theory, there are also rules. But the rules exist at a higher level of conceptual abstraction. For example, there is the rule that the therapist should hypothesize about the patient's likely present needs and pathogenic beliefs in order to help the patient obtain his or her unconscious goal of learning new and more satisfying aadaptations. This rule, however, exists at such a general level of abstraction that one cannot say ahead of time whether a PARTICULAR patient will require a pose of neurtrality, on the one hand, or intensive supportive intervention, on the other hand, or anything in between, by way of the therapist's conduct. Moreover, as the therapy progresses, the patient may need the therapist to alter or even reverse earlier kinds of interventions. In every instance, the therapist is guided by the patient's responsiveness to a particular intervention in order for the therapist to validate whether or not the therapist's hypothesis (about what intervention to use) is or is not serving the patient's unconscious goal of seeking more satisfying adaptations. That's what "case specificity" means in CMT.
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