The proposed work is based on the assumption that therapeutic change principles common to different orientations may be found at a level of abstraction between the specific clinical procedures used, and the higher order theoretical constructs that explain why these procedures are likely to be effective. This research focuses on one such principle, the use of therapeutic feedback to enhance the patient's/client's awareness.
The specific aims are as follows: (1) To sample significant therapy sessions from experienced and well respected psychodynamic-interpersonal and cognitive-behavioral therapists functioning within a naturalistic setting. (2) To develop a common research language, described in the vernacular, that will permit a comparative analysis of psychodynamic interpersonal and cognitive-behavior therapy. (3) Using numerical taxonomy procedures, to statistically generate a hierarchically arranged taxonomy of therapeutic feedback. By uncovering similarities and differences across orientations, we hope to highlight parameters of therapeutic feedback that should be the target of future research. (4) To create an archive of significant psychotherapy sessions that would be available to other psychotherapy process researchers. Significant therapy sessions will be sampled from 50 therapists; 25 vignettes will be sampled from psychodynamic-interpersonal therapists and 25 from cognitive-behavioral therapists. Each vignette will be coded with regard to the same set of attributes (thoughts, feelings, actions, etc.), and then grouped statistically by means of cluster analysis procedures. We hypothesize that similarities will be found across orientations for the higher order clusters, with differences appearing lower in the taxonomy.
