Teaching psychotherapy. Learning objectives in individual psychotherapy

Abstract

This paper constitutes an initial attempt to establish specific end-point objectives for the teaching (and learning) of individual psychotherapy skills. A working framework for teaching psychotherapy, which includes intrapsychic as well as interactional phenomena, is articulated. The framework also tries to achieve an integration of basic concepts of psychotherapy and specific skills for clinical practice. It draws on concepts derived from communication theory, psychoanalytic theory, adaptational theory (ego theory), learning theory, and transactional theory. In presenting these objectives three classes of skills are articulated: perceptual, conceptual, and executive. The end-point objectives are discribed for the following categories: 1) therapeutic stance, 2) history and mental status, 3) models and concepts, 4) communication channels, 5) patient's affect, 6) therapist's affect, 7) acceptance of affect, 8) interpretation, 9) transactions and 10) reinforcement and adaptation. This framework is truly eclectic in nature and effects a healthy compromise between the technique oriented "ABC's of psychotherapy" school and proponents of the view that psychotherapy is an art that cannot be taught. By drawing from more than one model it encourages the student to recognize early the distinction between theoretical formulation and ideological commitment in psychotherapy. It presents these objectives in the form of an instrument that can, with continuous refinement and testing, be used to evaluate student's progress in a psychotherapy training program.