Dr. Tsang started practicing psychotherapy as a clinical psychologist in the 1970s. He started off with a generalist practice that covered adult and children with a wide variety of mental health conditions including schizophrenic disorder, depression, personality disorders, anxiety disorder, sexuality, relationship problems, behavioral problems, and infantile autism.

Dr. Tsang was initially trained under strong psychoanalytic influence. His generalist practice back then required a pragmatic eclecticism in response to the diverse client problems. In the 1980s, Dr. Tsang developed interventions based on social learning and skills training for adults and children with severe mental health problems such as schizophrenic disorder and autism. During the same period, he was deeply engaged with phenomenological theory and co-developed a procedure that focused on narrative and meaning reconstruction together with a fellow clinical psychologist, Dr. Elsie S. Y. Ho. The procedure was called anthropotherapy. It emphasizes change in the whole person instead of committing to a metaphysical position regarding the psyche.Since moving to Canada, Dr. Tsang’s study and research led to the integration of the various approaches he had been exposed to. His active exploration of the various attempts at psychotherapy integration has resulted in the articulation of a meta-model for applying different psychotherapeutic procedures corresponding to specific client needs and circumstances. The meta-model is called MCM (Managing Multiple Contingencies), which emphasizes individual differences and provides a coherent and systematic framework for applying relevant procedures to bring about desired clinical change.Together with colleagues at the University of Toronto, he has applied the MCM model to develop an alternative approach to cross-cultural psychotherapy. The integrative approach to cross-cultural practice (ICCP) model is the result of more than a decade of research and theory development.

Clinical Change Process

Being able to map the clinical change process is an important part of the knowledge base for psychotherapy practice. Dr. Tsang has been very interested in studying the clinical change process since he came across Lewis Wolberg’s conceptualization in the 1970s. A mental map providing coordinates to chart the clinical change process can keep the client-therapist dyad from getting stuck, going around in circles, or feeling lost and confused.