Evaluation of psychotherapeutic interpretations : an example of the application of the phenomenological method to discovery-based psychotherapy research.
If much psychotherapy literature goes unread and unused by therapists, one reason may be the apparent irrelevance of theory-derived hypotheses to actual practice. Methods that uncover tacit knowledge that practicing therapists already possess can provide the empirical basis for more relevant theories and the testing of more meaningful hypotheses. This study demonstrates application of the phenomenological method to the question of evaluating psychotherapy. To discover how experienced psychotherapists evaluate interpretations made in actual psychotherapy sessions, therapists were asked to evaluate such interpretations from videotapes; analysis of responses yielded a set of 10 dimensions of evaluation. Such methods offer both practical utility and a source of theoretical growth anchored in the real world of the practicing therapist.
Four Winds Hospital, Katonah, New York; Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, New Jersey; and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
D L
DL
Pogge
M J
MJ
Dougher