My Driving Force

Contact Me: per@revstedt.com

My Driving Force

My driving force for founding Motivational Work, has been that there are no “hopeless cases”. It is possible to motivate everybody, including those seen as hopeless and destructive, regardless of symptoms and diagnoses.

Spreading knowledge about Motivational Work is close to my heart: those needing help receive it. My driving point is to help and support the staff who meet unmotivated clients, give them a method to use, and, at the same time, help them escape from being burnt out.

The Founding of Motivational Work

I am trained in Rogers’ client-centered therapy, psychodrama, and individual psychodynamic therapy, and I have worked for more than 40 years with unmotivated clients and patients. The easiest way to introduce myself and the method is by explaining how the founding of Motivational Work started.

In 1974 I began working at a therapeutic community institution. The institution’s approach was that clients must be motivated to be admitted for treatment. The treatment was aimed at drug abusers, but other groups of clients were also accepted, mainly from the penal system and psychiatry.

Most Clients Unmotivated

The staff, including myself, were trained in Rogers’ client-centered therapy, and we tried to adapt the method to unmotivated clients. In this way, we worked with the same method as Motivational Interviewing back in the 1970s. In reality, most clients were unmotivated to varying degrees – as are virtually all clients from the social services, prisons, and psychiatric units.

The Motivational Paradox

Our experience working with this method was that the clients who were least unmotivated completed the treatment program and were helped by it. People in this group applied to join the group themselves; they were active participants in the treatment program, tried to open up emotionally, were not threatening or aggressive, and had no relapses. Those who, in relative terms, needed the treatment least gained the most from it.

The more unmotivated clients either did not apply for the program or quit it prematurely by not following the department’s rules and demands. They did not voluntarily come to our institution or join through others’ initiatives; they only participated sporadically, did not open up emotionally, were menacing and aggressive, and had many relapses.

Those who were most in need of help received the least. This dilemma arises if we build treatment programs on motivation in the sense of the client cooperating constructively with his behavior, i.e., that he agrees to the treatment, follows the practitioner’s method, and seems able to reflect on his life situation.

The Solution to the motivational paradox

My driving force was to not accept this motivation paradox. Rather than rely on the notion that the client must meet the requirements of the method, I tried to adapt the technique to the client and her situation in life. Therefore, there was a need for the creation of motivational Work.

In this way, my driving force was to motivate unmotivated clients who would otherwise never have applied for the treatment. I also tried to encourage the remaining clients, who would otherwise have been rejected as a punishment or would have left the program themselves.

From these experiences, a theory and a method of how to motivate people evolved. Relatively soon, I began to teach and supervise motivational Work while continuing to work at the therapeutic community institution. In this way, I found Motivational Work.

My Driving Force – Continued Development of Motivational Work

After nine years, I left my job at the environmental therapy institution. I decided to work in psychiatry with unmotivated and destructive patients committed to the institution. My post as a psychologist was in the locked wards, which had the most challenging patients to treat and manage at the psychiatric hospital.

Many of them had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. There were also patients that the courts had sentenced to closed psychiatric care. They were murderers, rapists, incest offenders, violent abusers, or had committed other serious crimes.

I worked in a psychiatric institution for seven years. During this period, I also continued with various counseling and training commissions. In this environment, I had the opportunity to elaborate on the founding of Motivational Work in theory and practice.

I resigned from my job in psychiatry in 1990. Since then, I have been self-employed at my psychotherapy practice in Malmö, Sweden, and have carried out training and supervising commissions. Consequently, I have managed staff in social services, correctional treatment, and psychiatry.

The Personnel Paradox

There also seems to be a parallel to the motivation paradox. The personnel who have to treat so-called unmotivated clients meet a personnel paradox. The more unmotivated the clients are, the less help and support the personnel are given in their Work. I do not mean to disdain the efforts made by different groups of personnel working with motivated clients, but they often have more resources at their disposal.

My driving point is to improve the working conditions of the personnel who treat unmotivated clients as another foundation of Motivational Work. My experience as a supervisor for this personnel is that they do an impressive job with their clients despite their often tricky work situations.

P.S. You can get all four books on Motivational Work for free as an e-book if you apply for a Kindle unlimited membership at amazon.com. D.S.

Per Revstedt can teach and supervise both in English and Danish.

En vigtig oplysning er at Per Revstedt har 20 års erfaring at undervise og supervisere i Danmark. Han er fra Skåne og taler en forståelig svensk.

Du finder en beskrivelse af motivationsarbejde på dansk her: saxenhoj.dk