Cautionary notes on power steering for psychotherapy

Abstract:

Power steering enables the driver to turn the steering wheels in contact with the road not just with his or her own strength applied to the steering wheel but with extra power from the engine which moves the wheels to where the steering wheel says the driver wants them. Applying this principle to psychological therapies is a new area that is developing fast and showing interesting potential. This has obvious appeal for therapy commissioners and researchers, particularly in financial recession as it appears to provide a very low cost route to high volume data collection, improved outcomes and shortened therapies. This article argues that these methods need to be evaluated more carefully to avoid problems seen when the physical health field used proxy outcome measures and sought zealous control and normalization through use of measurement and corrective action. The article suggests that psychotherapy and psychotherapy research methods are bound up with social, political and technical change that have unintended direct consequences and wider sociopolitical ramifications than intended. The author argues that development of servo-control methods in psychological therapies must be tempered by consideration of their compatibility with therapy theories and practices and with research methods and theories and seen as part of a host of complementary and interwoven paradigms in our field, not as a dominant new paradigm used to denigrate and disenfranchise work that does not fit with a rationalist Zeitgeist. Finally, this article argues that practitioners, and particularly trainers and trainees, need to be very careful that the uniqueness of the individual, and of every single client-therapist relationship, is not sidelined by a reassuring focus on the score data that replaces attention to the feelings and challenges of empathy. © 2012 Canadian Psychological Association.

Año de publicación:

2012

Keywords:

• assessment
• Progress tracking
• CORE system
• Progress monitoring
• psychotherapy

Fuente:

scopus