Our program of research 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 awareness.
The specific aims are as follows: 1. To develop a common research language for coding therapeutic feedback; 2. To use this coding system to study the relationship between process and outcome in cognitive therapy for depression; 3. To replicate and extend our preliminary comparative analysis of psychodynamic-interpersonal and cognitive-behavioral therapy; 4. To extend our preliminary findings on the relationship between process and outcome in the treatment of depression with psychodynamic-interpersonal and cognitive-behavioral therapy; 5. To sample significant therapy sessions from experienced and well-respected psychodynamic-interpersonal and cognitive-behavioral therapists functioning within a naturalistic setting; 6. To generate a taxonomy of therapeutic feedback parameters that may be the target of future research; 7. To create an archive of psychotherapy sessions that would be available to other psychotherapy process researchers. These research goals will be pursued by analyzing transcripts of therapy sessions associated with completed outcome studies of the effectiveness of cognitive therapy for depression and a comparison of the relative effectiveness of cognitive-behavior therapy and psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy in the treatment of depression. In addition, significant sessions will be sampled from 25 psychodynamic-interpersonal and 25 cognitive-behavioral therapists, which will be used to study both similarities and unique aspects of these orientations.
