Abstract
Economic pressures and “value” judgments both compel and contaminate the current debate on the efficacy of psychotherapy. Too often, complex clinical trial outcome studies ignore the clinical or treatment process, as well as personality or contextual variables. Thus, they fail to build the foundations of a clinical science that makes possible the development of individually tailored treatment approaches and outcome predictions for specific patients with unique personalities, symptoms, and life circumstances. The real challenge, therefore, is for each psychotherapeutic approach to delineate its “process steps” and relate these steps to different outcomes. The “process” is the “final common pathway” for a number of patient, therapist, technique, and contextual variables. The capacity to predict the relationship between process and outcome at each stage in a therapeutic procedure is the relevant clinical test of “efficacy”.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1213-1219 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Archives of General Psychiatry |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1981 |
| Externally published | Yes |
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ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Psychiatry and Mental health
Cite this
Efficacy of Psychotherapy : Asking the Right Questions. / Greenspan, Stanley I.; Sharfstein, Steven S.
In: Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 38, No. 11, 1981, p. 1213-1219.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Efficacy of Psychotherapy
T2 - Asking the Right Questions
AU - Greenspan, Stanley I.
AU - Sharfstein, Steven S.
PY - 1981
Y1 - 1981
N2 - Economic pressures and “value” judgments both compel and contaminate the current debate on the efficacy of psychotherapy. Too often, complex clinical trial outcome studies ignore the clinical or treatment process, as well as personality or contextual variables. Thus, they fail to build the foundations of a clinical science that makes possible the development of individually tailored treatment approaches and outcome predictions for specific patients with unique personalities, symptoms, and life circumstances. The real challenge, therefore, is for each psychotherapeutic approach to delineate its “process steps” and relate these steps to different outcomes. The “process” is the “final common pathway” for a number of patient, therapist, technique, and contextual variables. The capacity to predict the relationship between process and outcome at each stage in a therapeutic procedure is the relevant clinical test of “efficacy”.
AB - Economic pressures and “value” judgments both compel and contaminate the current debate on the efficacy of psychotherapy. Too often, complex clinical trial outcome studies ignore the clinical or treatment process, as well as personality or contextual variables. Thus, they fail to build the foundations of a clinical science that makes possible the development of individually tailored treatment approaches and outcome predictions for specific patients with unique personalities, symptoms, and life circumstances. The real challenge, therefore, is for each psychotherapeutic approach to delineate its “process steps” and relate these steps to different outcomes. The “process” is the “final common pathway” for a number of patient, therapist, technique, and contextual variables. The capacity to predict the relationship between process and outcome at each stage in a therapeutic procedure is the relevant clinical test of “efficacy”.
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U2 - 10.1001/archpsyc.1981.01780360029002
DO - 10.1001/archpsyc.1981.01780360029002
M3 - Article
C2 - 7305601
AN - SCOPUS:0019800227
VL - 38
SP - 1213
EP - 1219
JO - JAMA Psychiatry
JF - JAMA Psychiatry
SN - 2168-622X
IS - 11
ER -