In this naturalistic study, 262 audiotaped psychotherapy sessions--randomly drawn from 81 individual therapies from eight different psychotherapy approaches--were rated completely on treatment adherence using a newly developed rating manual. In the therapy sessions, a relatively low percentage of treatment specific interventions (ranging from 4.2% to 27.8%) was found for all eight approaches, 50% to 73% of the interventions were nonspecific or common, and approximately 18% to 27% were intervention techniques from other approaches. Different types of psychotherapy differed highly significantly in levels of treatment adherence. There was no statistically significant association between the type of psychotherapy and its outcome, or between the degree of therapists' treatment fidelity and the treatment outcome. However, there were significant associations between therapists' degree of professional experience, clients' initial psychological burden, and treatment response. Clients' severity of psychological problems prior to treatment predicted quality of therapeutic alliance while therapists' treatment adherence was predicted by therapists' professional experience and by the quality of the therapeutic alliance. We discuss the seemingly indirect importance of treatment adherence for psychotherapy outcome that we found in this study in relation to findings from other studies and in the context of the role of schools within psychotherapy.

Since the results show that therapists differ substantially with regard to their intervention techniques due to their sex, they should become more conscious of their interventions by considering patients' severity of psychological problems and patients' level of psychological functioning so as to not over or underchallenge them.

This article reports about the role of psychotherapists in creating a good enough therapeutic alliance as the basic task for other therapeutic factors come into play. Data from a naturalistic study involving 237 patients treated by 68 psychotherapists using 10 different psychotherapy approaches were analyzed in a process-outcome research design. The results show that therapists had to adapt their alliance perspectives to patients' level of alliance ratings as treatments progressed. Treatment concepts did not play a role in outcome. The view of a similar quality of the therapeutic alliance seems to be an indispensable precondition for favorable treatment outcomes. Successful treatments were conducted more often by therapists who showed significant convergence of alliance ratings over time, whereas discrepant alliance ratings correlated significantly with unsuccessful treatments.

Results from a multi-center evaluation study of body-psychotherapies are reported. The design is naturalistic and evaluates the effectiveness of routine applications of body-psychotherapy in outpatient settings. 3 German and 5 Swiss member institutes of the European Association for Body Psychotherapy (EABP: 38 members) participated, the Swiss institutes also being members of the Schweizer Charta für Psychotherapie. At three points of measurement (at intake, after 6 months and at the end of therapy [after two years at maximum]) well established questionnaires (e. g. BAI, BDI, SCL-90-R, IIP-D) were administered. Meanwhile we also have catamnestic data at 1 year after termination of therapy (n = 42). Patients who seek body-psychotherapeutic treatment (n = 342 participated in the study) compare to other outpatient psychotherapeutic patients concerning sociodemographic data, level of impairment and psychopathology. After six months of therapy (n = 253) these patients have significantly improved with small to moderate intraclass effect sizes. At the end of therapy or after two years of treatment at maximum (n = 160) large effect sizes are attained in all scales. These are lasting results according to catamnestic data (n = 42). This naturalistic prospective field study claims to supply evidence for the effectiveness of the evaluated body-psychotherapeutic methods and to classify as phase IV- ("routine application") and level I-evidence.

Bedeutung der psychotherapeutischen Schulen heute Geschichte und Ausblick anhand einer empirischen Untersuchung