Psychotherapy Process Research

This preliminary survey wants to be a first contribution to a
critical review on psychotherapy process research. The aim is to describe:
how can process research be divided? According to what dimension? In how
many ways? The goals of this research are to trace the implicit and basic
dimensions that can organize the heterogeneity of this sector in a consistent
way. According to our goal we used a grid built up through several variables
by means of which we segmented the studies on process research (both
process and process-outcome studies) extracted from 13 scientific journals
over the last ten years (1998-2007). The goals were: a) Quantifying and
classifying the scientific production of the last ten years b) exploring the
main models that articulate and organize the field. We found two main
epistemological models in the process research: the model of analysis and
the interpretative model. These two models give rise to three different
approaches: Conjectural approach, Sperimental and Mixed Approach, both
rising questions about the construct of significance, the choice of the objects
of analysis and the relation between the object of the research and the
methodology adopted.

Übersicht: Typische problematische Situationen (TPS), die makroanalytisch beschreibbar sind, kennen Therapeuten sehr gut: Wenn der Patient zu spät kommt, die Rechnung nicht bezahlt wird, Ferien-Regelungen nicht zustimmt, den Kassenantrag lesen möchte, eine Stunde verlegt werden soll. Daneben lassen sich TPS erkennen, die nur mikroanalytisch erfasst werden können. Sie zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie weitaus schwerer zu erkennen sind, doch wenn man sie einmal erkannt hat, erkennt man sie wieder. Solche Situationen sind Klippen, an denen sich Gelingen oder Scheitern des Prozesses entscheiden kann; sie fordern besonderes Können und ein erhöhtes Maß an Empathie. Empathie wird im vor-liegenden Beitrag als etwas beschrieben, das aus verschiedenen Komponenten besteht, die in einem bestimmten Verhältnis zueinander stehen; für den Autor kann – und muss – sie sich immer in der Konversation bewähren, nie anders.

Abstract "Scenic Understanding and Conversation Analysis"
Scenic understanding is compat­ible with philosophical persuasions that allocate a »scenic form of existence« to the human individual. This view encompasses interaction and hence also »conversation,« which Freud regards as the starting point for all analysis. Here we can draw upon the
resources of conversational analysis. The author provides an ntroduction to conversa­tional analysis and its two »branches,« sociological and linguistic, and discusses it with reference to example transcripts. He indicates that a link between scenic understanding and conversational analysis can add a dimension to the Unconscious that extends to the dynamics of ongoing conversation. This empirical dimension can be worked on scientifically and is notable for its absence in other empirical methods favored at present.

This study used Q methodology to explore clinicians' perspectives regarding optimal psychotherapy process in the treatment of pathological narcissism, a syndrome of impaired self-regulation. Participants were 34 psychotherapists of various disciplines and theoretical orientations who reviewed 3 clinical vignettes portraying hypothetical cases of grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, and panic disorder without pathological narcissism. Participants then used the Psychotherapy Process Q set, a 100-item Q-sort instrument, to indicate their views regarding optimal therapy process for each hypothetical case. By-person principal components analysis with varimax rotation was conducted on all 102 Q-sorts, revealing 4 components representing clinicians' perspectives on ideal therapy processes for narcissistic and non-narcissistic patients. These perspectives were then analyzed regarding their relationship to established therapy models. The first component represented an introspective, relationally oriented therapy process and was strongly correlated with established psychodynamic treatments. The second component, most frequently endorsed for the panic disorder vignette, consisted of a cognitive and alliance-building approach that correlated strongly with expert-rated cognitive– behavioral therapy. The third and fourth components involved therapy processes focused on the challenging interpersonal behaviors associated with narcissistic vulnerability and grandiosity, respectively. The perspectives on therapy processes that emerged in this study reflect different points of emphasis in the treatment of pathological narcissism, and may serve as prototypes of therapist-generated approaches to patients suffering from this issue. The findings suggest several areas for further empirical inquiry regarding psychotherapy with this population.

"Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009. (484 p. ; ISBN 978-1-4384-2941-0 ; 65,32 €) (Jan 2011, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4384-2940-3)
A good part of what fuels the current boom in consciousness studies is the robust progress of cognitive psychology and neuroscience toward reaching consensus explanations of just about anything except consciousness. Despite hopes that empirical research and computational modeling would constrain theory, it seems that scholarly debate has not so much reached an impasse as remained at one reached in the 17th century. Given the massive effort currently invested in research and debate, the lack of progress towards a general (and generally accepted) theory of consciousness begins indeed to make consciousness look like a kind of 21st century Philosopher’s Stone, whose hidden nature seems to hold the key to the greatest mysteries, but continues to elude us. Accordingly, the present volume taps leading researchers and theorists in the study of consciousness and Whitehead scholars to explore an interface between process thinking and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. In sum, the rationale for such a project has two main facets: first, the state of an educated debate that seems, first, unproductive and peculiarly burdened by its deep modernist origins; and, secondly, marked more by disciplinary rivalry than interdisciplinary synthesis.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Preface, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Main Themes of the Book
2. Précis of the Contributions
I. Introductory Essays, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness
2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy
3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought
4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness
II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin (Claremont)
6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko (Nijmegen)
7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin (Harvard)
III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro-)Science and Back Again
8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields (Kentucky State)
9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans (Goldsmiths)
10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg (New York)
IV. Applications to Psychiatry: Consciousness as Process
11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska (Lublin and Gdansk) and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Bydgoszcz)
12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger (Tel Aviv), Michael Frost (Tel Aviv) , Ofer Keren (Raanana and Tel-Aviv)
13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy
14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley (Toulouse le Mirail)
15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes (New York)"

In einem Rückgriff auf philosophische Positionen wird der Sublimierungsbegriffs Freuds als unzureichend analysiert, um dann durch weitere theoretische Erörterung zu einer evolutionstheoretischen Frage nach der Rolle des Ästhetischen im Humanum vorzudringen. Es ist nicht das verzichtbare "Sahnehäubchen", sondern für das Humanum zentral und unverzichtbar; jede Therapietheorie, die es vermißt, müsste als unvollständig angesehen werden

Emotions have a life beyond the immediate eliciting situation, as they tend to be shared with others by putting the experience in narrative form. Narrating emotions helps us to express, understand, and share them: the way we tell stories influences how others react to our emotions, and impacts how we cope with emotions ourselves. In Emotion and Narrative, Habermas introduces the forms of oral narratives of personal experiences, and highlights a narrative's capacity to integrate various personal and temporal perspectives. Via theoretical proposals richly illustrated with oral narratives from clinical and non-clinical samples, he demonstrates how the form and variety of perspectives represented in stories strongly, yet unnoticeably, influence the emotional reactions of listeners. For instance, narrators defend themselves against negativity and undesired views of themselves by excluding perspectives from narratives. Habermas shows how parents can help children, and psychotherapists can assist patients, to enrich their narratives with additional perspectives.

Die Entwicklung der Psychotherapieprozessforschung wird nachskizziert: am Anfang stand die medizinische Analogie (Intervention - Störung - Outcome), dem folgte die relationale Orientierung (Beziehung, insbesondere Arbeitsbeziehung ist zentral) und vieles entwickelt sich nun auf eine Dimension des Ästhetischen in der Psychotherapie hin. Das hat Folgen für die Wertschätzung von Musik- und Kunsttherapie.

Objective: To investigate (a) whether expert clinicians within psychodynamic therapy (PDT) and cognitive-behavioral
therapy (CBT) agree on key features of child psychotherapy process using the Child Psychotherapy Process Q-Set (CPQ);
(b) whether these two prototypes can be empirically distinguished; and (c) whether promoting mentalization
(operationalized as reflective functioning [RF]) is a shared component of the way expert clinicians conceptualize these two
treatment models. Method: Thirty-one raters with expertise in PDT, CBT, and RF provided ratings of the 100 CPQ
items to describe an ideal prototype session that adheres to the principles of their treatment model. Two Q-factor analyses
with varimax rotation were conducted. Results: Expert clinicians reached a high level of agreement on their respective
PDT and CBT prototypes. These prototypes loaded onto two independent factors. The RF process prototype loaded onto
both factors. Conclusions: From the theoretical perspective of expert clinicians representing PDT and CBT, a focus on
RF appears to be a common process factor in the way both treatment models are conceptualized. The CPQ can also be a
useful instrument in teaching psychotherapy process from different theoretical perspectives and training future clinicians
in their application. Future researchers can use these prototypes to explore process in actual sessions.

Many patients leave psychotherapy although in need. What can professional practitioners and researchers assume what happened? Trying to receive a response from these patients we too often are left without an answer. In this paper I introduce to psychotherapy discourse some concepts taken from linguistics and Conversation Analysis (CA). The reason is that what psychotherapists of every kind do is " talk-in-interaction ". During such talk Typical Problematic Situations (TPS) appear which are well known in a macro-analytic perspective (if a patient comes late to the session, does not talk or blackmails the therapist with suicide threat). However, there are many TPS that can be detected by a micro-analytic perspective only. CA is a tool helping to idenfity this type of TPS. One relevant CA-concept is Common Ground, a psychological and linguistic concept which requires special activity from both participants in an interaction. Conversational " errors " that risk to tear the Common Ground often go unnoticed. Presenting segments of transcribed therapy sessions I want to direct attention to the details of how 'errors' in Common Ground activity happen, how they are noticed and dealt with by skillfull therapists or how they can become repaired. Among others I use transcription details of two suicidal patients. The transcripts are from the CEMPP-Project (Conversation analysis of Empathy in psychotherapy process), conducted at IPU, Berlin. Thanks to a grant by Köhler-Stiftung, Germany.

Five inpatients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) participated in six months of three-times-per-week psychodynamic therapy (PDT).  Patients completed a measure of psychological distress every week.  A total of 127 sessions were audiotaped and coded using the Psychotherapy Process Q-Set (PQS) and correlated with PQS prototypes of five treatment models—PDT, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), interpersonal therapy, transference focused psychotherapy (TFP), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).  Prototypical CBT process was most prevalent in three of the five PDT-labeled treatments.  Prototypical PDT process significantly decreased over time in three of the five treatments.  Prototypical process correlations with time were inversely proportional to prototypical process correlations with distress levels.  In a multiple regression model that included all five prototypical process correlations across these three treatments, CBT and TFP predicted distress reduction, whereas PDT predicted increases in distress.  PQS items most negatively correlated with distress included the therapist’s emphasis on feelings, empathic attunement, and control over the interaction.  Discussion of dreams or fantasies and therapist aloofness were most positively correlated with distress.  An effective PDT treatment model for severely disturbed BPD inpatients requires technical flexibility to supplement CBT processes such as control over the interaction that can structure intense interpersonal dysregulation and stabilize distress.

The starting point of conversation analytical research on psychotherapy was in Kathy Davis’s work on problem reformulations in the mid 1980s. Since then there has been a growing body of analysis of psychotherapy, based on the close, sequential relations between adjacent utterances. Through exam- ples drawn from CA studies on psychotherapy in the past decade, this review shows that sequential relations between utterances enable a process of transformation of experience. This process pertains to referents, emotion, and momentary relations between the therapist and the client. The utterance-by-utterance transformation contributes to the process of change in more macroscopic time, spanning the continuum of psychother- apeutic sessions. The recent developments of CA research on psychiatric consultants will also be discussed. Data are in Finnish and English.

En este artículo se argumenta sobre la relevancia del análisis de la conversación para el estudio de la psicoterapia. Se realiza una revisión de la trayectoria histórica que ha seguido la búsqueda de los factores determinantes de la efectividad terapéutica, se consideran los logros y limitaciones de este proyecto. Aunque la investigación sobre la efectividad ha arrojado datos importantes, presenta una desventaja mayor: no ofrece una comprensión detallada del proceso terapéutico tal como ocurre en situaciones de práctica. Se propone que el análisis de la conversación ofrece una alternativa de exploración desde una perspectiva naturalista, rigurosa y sistemática que toma en cuenta la complejidad de la interacción entre terapeuta y paciente. El análisis de la conversación aborda la producción de sentido desde una perspectiva centrada en los usos del lenguaje, en donde cada turno de habla representa una forma de acción social. Se describen los principios teóricos de esta metodología y se ofrece un bosquejo de las maneras en que puede ofrecer una comprensión detallada de la terapia, una de las más relevantes es que puede iluminar aspectos de la práctica que no son considerados por los marcos teóricos de los terapeutas. Palabras clave: Psicoterapia, efectividad terapéutica, análisis de la conversación, proceso terapeútico.

This study examined the constellation of interaction structures - repetitive patterns of interactions between patient and therapist over the course of treatment - that emerged in the psychodynamic therapy (PDT) of a child diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and treated by two doctoral-student therapists.  Identification of these interaction structures can inform therapists of what might be expected from patients with particular symptom or behavior patterns and how interactions change over time.  This study also examined each session’s adherence to three session prototypes:  PDT, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and reflective functioning (RF) process.  The Child Psychotherapy Q-Set (CPQ; Schneider & Jones, 2004) is a 100-item instrument that assesses the processes within a single psychotherapy session.  Items reflect a wide range of therapist attitudes and behaviors, patient attitudes and behaviors, and interactions between therapist and patient.  Experts used the CPQ to define PDT, CBT, and RF process session prototypes.  The results suggested that four distinct interaction structures could be identified and that their constellations differed between the two therapists and also differed over time within each treatment.  Therapists were more structured and accommodating early on in their treatments and more interpretive later.  Prototypical PDT process was more prominent in the sessions than RF process, which in turn was more prominent than CBT process.  Unique therapeutic processes are at work in every dyad, despite holding the patient and theoretical orientation constant.  An effective treatment in one dyad might not work in another due to therapist-specific and dyad-specific effects.

Analysis at a paralinguistic level of communication, already conceptualized within the multiple code theory, would appear to be very important in order to fully describe the quality of the patient-therapist relationship. In this study the therapeutic process and microprocess are analyzed taking into consideration a specific paraverbal aspect (speech rate) present in patient and therapist's communication. More specifically, in this paper we aim to investigate the relationship between the speech rate of both patient and therapist with the linguistic aspects of their referential process as obtained by the IDAAP dictionaries, relating to three sessions belonging to different phases of the psychotherapy. The results show that there are many significant correlations between the considered values. These findings are interpreted as an expression of the alignment between patient and therapist which can be linked to the outcome of the psychotherapy.

Increasing evidence supports the efficacy of body-oriented psychotherapy (BPT) for schizophrenia. Yet, so far no research has investigated outcome in relation to therapy process: Why and how BPT is effective. In this study, we qualitatively explore participants' experience of a manualized BPT for schizophrenia to shed light on the process of therapeutic change. We conducted in-depth interviews with 6 participants who completed a 10-week BPT group intervention. Interviews explored participants' experience of change and helpful aspects of therapy and were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. We identified six master themes across the interviews: (i) Being a whole: body-mind connection; (ii) Being agentic and being able; (iii) Being unique and worthy: Being accepted for who one is; (iv) Changing interactions: Engaging in authentic interpersonal contact; (v) Being part of a group: Feeling integrated; and (vi) Hope and investing in the future. We discuss the c...

Zusammenfassung: Die therapeutische Welt baut sich zu einer " Veränderungstechnologie " um, das Selbstverständnis von Psychotherapie der vergangenen Jahre verschwindet-zum Schaden der Psychotherapie. Hier werden empirische Arbeiten genannt, die diesem Trend nachhaltig widersprechen. Der Titel ist These. Verbindung ist nicht einseitig, auch der Therapeut braucht Verbindung zum Patienten, weil er sonst seine Arbeit nicht tun könnte. Diese Verbindung untersuche ich, langjährig erfahrener Psychotherapeut, mit Mitteln der Konversationsanalyse, die das Potential hat, die ermattete Debatte zwischen einem " technischen " und einem " hermeneutischen " Verständnis der Psychotherapie zu einer " triadischen Epistemologie " zu dynamisieren. Die Konversationsanalyse bietet hier insbesondere die Konzepte von Alignment, Affiliation und " common ground " an, die ich als aufeinander aufbauend zur Analyse von transkribierten therapeutischen Gesprächen nutze. Ich führe ein Konzept der " vorausschauenden Empathie " ein. Abstract: The therapeutic world is turning into a change technology, the therapeutic self-image of the last years vanishes – to the detriment of the therapeutic endeavor. The empirical studies discussed here clearly and poignantly contradict this trend. Change needs connection – the title is thesis. Connection is not a one-sided affair, therapists, too, need connection with their patients, otherwise they cannot do their job. As a well experienced clinician I study connection in therapy using conversation analysis (CA). CA hast the potential to reanimate the weary debate between a " technical " and a " hermeneutic " conceptualization of psychotherapy by dynamizing it into a " triadic epistemology ". Here, CA offers concepts like alignment, affiliation and common ground which will be used as conceptual architecture for the analysis of transcribed therapeutic conversations. I will introduce a concept of " anticipatory empathy " .

Zusammenfassung:
Gestalt- und feldtheoretische Prinzipien werden auf die  wissenschaftliche Untersuchung des therapeutischen Geschehens angewendet, wobei insbesondere auf ein methodisches Vorgehen, das THOMAE vorgeschlagen hat, eingegangen wird. Es wird herausgearbeitet, daß ein möglichst weitgehendes Einbeziehen der Klientenperspektive von entscheidender Bedeutung für Psychotherapie-Wirkungsforschung ist.

Summary:
Principles of Gestalt and Field Theory are applied to the study of psychotherapeutic processes. Methodological aspects proposed in the work of THOMAE are included. The article outlines the contribution of the client’s perspective to the assessment of psychotherapy.

Die Beziehung zwischen Ursache und Wirkung beschäftigt die Wissenschaft seit ihren Anfängen. Zumindest seit Aristoteles gehen viele bedeutende Philosophen der Frage nach, wie sich Kausalität beschreiben lässt. Auch für psychologische und psychotherapeutische Forschung steht in weiterer Folge auch die Frage im Vordergrund, wie sich Ursache-Wirkungs-Zusammenhänge überhaupt erkennen lassen. DASS Psychotherapie wirkt, ist unumstritten. Über Beschaffenheit und Arten dieser Wirkung und über die „Wirkfaktoren“ im Rahmen psychotherapeutischen Handelns konnten bisher nur wenige Studien plausibel Auskunft geben. Dieser Artikel versucht, ausgehend von den Ideen des Gestaltpsychologien Karl Duncker zum produktiven Denken und zur phänomenalen Kausalität, eine Annäherung an eine mögliche Herangehensweise zur Wirksamkeitsforschung zu geben.
Das Thema ist nicht nur für Forschungsarbeit relevant. Auch die PsychotherapeutInnen und ihre KlientInnen haben ihre Ideen darüber, was nun wie wirkt und was nicht.

La investigación actual en el campo de la psicoterapia y de la psicoterapia psicoanalítica está fundamentalmente basada en material primario (Luborsky y Spence, 1978) correspondiente a protocolos verbales que contienen transcripciones literales de sesiones de psicoterapia. Esto puede observarse en los principales encuentros científicos donde se presentan y discuten investigaciones, como los de la Sociedad de Investigación en Psicoterapia, donde cada vez más se presta mayor atención a ese material como base de la investigación empírica. Podemos dividir las distintas líneas de investigación entre aquellas que utilizan categorizaciones del material producidas por evaluadores o jueces humanos y aquellas que se basan en métodos computarizados.

Das Psychologiestudium ist nach Meinung eigener Fachvertreter trotz seines hochwertigen Standards reformbedürftig. Erörtert werden das an der Hochschule vorherrschende naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnisideal und die einseitige Festlegung auf Verhaltenstherapie. Beschrieben werden die Folgen der nahezu vollständig fehlenden Vermittlung der Vielfalt von praktizierten, wissenschaftlich anerkannten Behandlungsverfahren, verfahrensangemessenen Forschungsmethoden und Wissenschaftsmodellen, die nicht zuletzt durch eine einseitige Lehrstuhlbesetzung hervorgerufen werden. Anschließend werden die Auswirkungen auf die Psychotherapieforschung, Öffentlichkeit, Entscheidungsträger und vor allem die Sozialisation der Studierenden dargelegt. Zum Schluss werden einige Anforderungen formuliert, die vom psychotherapeutischen Berufsfeld an die universitäre Psychologie zu stellen sind, um angemessen auf die Ausbildung von Psychotherapeuten und Berufspraxis vorbereiten zu können.

Este estudio pertenece a una serie de investigaciones realizadas acerca del proceso de cambio. Un grupo de investigadores en España, Argentina, México, Chile y Alemania han trabajado durante más de una década (1997-2010) en el Proyecto Salamanca-Barcelona-Madrid sobre la investigación del proceso terapéutico (SMBP; Ávila-Espada, Vidal-Didier et al., 1998a; Ávila-Espada, Gutiérrez, Mitjavila & Poch, 2002). Este estudio, realizado como un estudio intensivo de un caso único (La Publicitaria), a través de las diferentes fases del tratamiento completo (con 199 sesiones adecuadamente grabadas en audio), nos ha dado la oportunidad de obtener un mejor conocimiento del proceso terapéutico, a través del análisis de contenido de las sesiones de tratamiento con datos cualitativos y utilizando una amplia variedad de procedimientos. Está en curso una serie de trabajos, que presentan los principales resultados acerca de las dimensiones empíricas y las dinámicas del proceso de cambio. En este trabajo el foco está puesto en las FRAMES (Estructuras de Emoción Fundamentales, Repetitivas y Desadaptadas; Dahl, 1988), presentándose inferencias sobre cómo puede observarse el cambio a través de los cambios en los patrones de FRAMES. Se describen los resultados del análisis de la FRAMES dominante (Exigencia) y se identifican las principales preguntas de investigación pendientes.

Objectives: A methodological obstacle for the assessment of psychotherapy process concerns the compatibility between nomothetic versus idiographic approaches. Using quantitative methodology at an idiographic level, we seek to narrow this gap for the special case of nonverbal synchrony in psychotherapy dyads.

Methods: Using quantitative idiographic process analysis (QUIPA), we combined the assessments of nonverbal synchrony—the coordination of patient's and therapist's body-movement—quantified with motion energy analysis (MEA), patient- and therapist session-reports, and patient’s self-reports of symptomatology into multivariate time-series of psychotherapy process across the course of N = 12 dyadic psychotherapies with a total of N = 150 sessions. Adopting both mixed models as well as vector auto regressive models (VAR) to time-series, we aimed to extend previous results assessed in a randomized sample by exploring the evolution of nonverbal synchrony in psychotherapy dyads across time.

Results: Aggregated idiographic data revealed that nonverbal synchrony was different from findings based on a previously reported nomothetic account: Associations with session-level outcome were weaker and did not replicate cross-sectional analyses.

Conclusions: The application of idiographic assessments may help broadening our conception of synchrony in psychotherapy and also reminds us that ergodicity is not necessarily the usual case, but one of many possibilities.

This is a short report on a qualitative study conducted in a clinic for psychotherapy in Germany. 30 patients, 30 nurses and 30 psychotherapists (summing up to 90 interviews) were retrospectively interviewed about therapy experience they had together. Four models of "making contact" could be extracted from the interviews. Furthermore, it could be shown that the models for "Contact" between patients and nurses (resp. therapists) can qualitatively predict the outcome of therapy.

A full transcript of a group supervision is presented and a wide range of analyses study what's going on in the group session, the quality of the supervision and the therapeutic outcome. Methods applied are
- Luborsky's CCRT
- SASB (Structural Analysis of Social Behavior, Lorna Smith Benjamin)
- Cognitive Analysis of Embodied Metaphors (Buchholz)
- Psychoanalytic-depth-hermeneutic method
- Comments of experienced clinicians

En la investigación reciente ha emergido con claridad la necesidad de desarrollar un método que nos permita establecer inferencias empíricas sobre la forma en que el terapeuta elabora su plan estratégico de tratamiento. Este Plan del Terapeuta es en gran medida implícito y opera como un plan de acción latente natural, influido por la teoría, las directrices técnicas y el estilo personal. Este trabajo muestra las principales características, el procedimiento y las dimensiones principales de un nuevo método utilizado para desarrollar inferencias "naturalistas" sobre el Plan de Acción Latente del Terapeuta (TLAP) en determinado terapeuta. El procedimiento incluye los siguientes pasos: 1) Identificar y valorar las intervenciones tal como se producen (tanto con o sin ayuda de un sistema categorial); 2) Describir el estilo técnico que de hecho utiliza el terapeuta; 3) Inferir su Plan de Acción Inicial. Comenzaremos nuestro trabajo con la hipótesis de que en las cinco primeras sesiones el terapeuta ha hecho explícito su Plan de Acción y, o bien nosotros podemos inferirlo de su Estilo Personal, o bien a partir de la clase de intervenciones que utiliza (Estilo Técnico). Nuestro objetivo es formular un TLAP que incluya: I. Estilo guiado por la técnica. II. Estilo personal del terapeuta, que mejora o completa las orientaciones técnicas que sigue. III. Estilo personal del terapeuta que podría suponer una interferencia negativa. Como principales áreas a explorar se han propuesto nueve grupos de categorías de funciones técnicas y ocho grupos de categorías de contenido, con un total de 63 categorías simples. El principal método de análisis aplicado a este sistema categorial ha sido el análisis multivariado, tomando como variables las categorías valoradas como presencia/ausencia, y como casos cada una de las 413 intervenciones...

Despite the long tradition in psychotherapy research literature concerning the role of therapeutic alliance (TA), both in terms of process and outcome in clinical intervention , little is known about its specific characteristics in short term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP). Accordingly, the main aim of the present work is to focus on the formal features of TA in a good outcome STDP. We applied the Collaborative Interaction Scale (Colli & Lingiardi, 2009) to verbatim transcripts in order to track macro and micro evolution of TA while considering the interplay of both therapist and patient contributions. Data were analyzed in terms of TA general trend, TA climate onset and high impact session TA characteristics. Results sustain the STDP theory of technique (Da-vanloo, 1990) concerning the general process, the onset features and patient therapist interplay from a TA perspective.