| The purpose of this clinical research project is to offer a comprehensive literature review on animals aiding humans and to show how many of these applications have the potential to be adapted to psychotherapy venues. The author studied four research questions, (1) can the unconditional love and acceptance that animals, especially dogs, provide be utilized as a therapy tool, (2) can animal therapy aids be utilized as projective tools to help therapists understand their patients more effectively, (3) can animals be utilized as therapeutic agents for aiding in the development of the patient/therapist relationship and (4) can the utilization of an animals ability to sense mood changes, such as using an animals ability to sense pheromone changes, aid a therapist in gaining insight into a patient's emotional states? Results were generated by going back over the literature to seek support, if any, for the research questions. Through this procedure some amount of merit was found for all four research questions, with the most data found to support question one and question three. Results also showed a lack of research in the field as a whole. The study points out that there are many ways in which animals could be used in a more comprehensive manner that, if researched more thoroughly, could add to the arsenal of psychotherapy tools currently available. The author concludes with suggestions for future studies and suggestions for ways in which this research could be implemented into psychotherapy work. |
