Susanna Mittermaier
University clinic of Lund, Austria
Title: Pragmatic psychology: empowering leaders of the future
Biography
Biography: Susanna Mittermaier
Abstract
We often hear that children are the future. Are we doing what we can to empower children or are we doing what we can to make them fit in and be like we have decided they should be? Labeling and diagnosing has become one of the main tasks in psychiatry nowadays. What used to be difference is nowadays labeled as wrongness. What future are we creating with that? Are we embracing diversity or enforcing sameness? What else is possible? What if every wrong could be turned into strength and a resource? What if we celebrated diversity and learning how to use it to create a future that works? It is time for a new pragmatic approach. “Pragmatic” means doing what works. What works is asking for the possibilities in the seemingly impossible. The target with pragmatic psychology is with practical tools 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. This can results in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (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 source of creation; patients coming for anger management discovering their potency that was covered by their label; post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD ceasing to haunt clients and the potency slumbering all those years behind the victimizing story being accessed; and autism being acknowledged as a highly interactive and communicating group of people.