Good and very good moments in psychotherapy: Content, distribution, and facilitation.

Abstract

Ten judges applied a twelvefold category system of good and very good moments of client movement, progress, improvement, process, or change to two consecutive middle sessions of experiential psychotherapy. The findings indicated a) a large proportion of good and very good moments in both sessions; b) the distribution of good and very good moments into a distinctive subset of the 12 categories; c) the occurrence of bursts or series of good moments rather than discrete events; d) in-session stages or phases of good moments; e) distinctive clusters of good and very good moments; andf) data-generated hypotheses of therapist methods effective in the occurrence and maintenance of very good moments.Many researchers have called for the study of good moments of welcomed and desirable client movement, progress, improvement, process, or change (

The Study of Values in Psychotherapy: A Critique and Call for an Alternative Method

“…The goal of this research was to study "good therapy moments" as instances of values manifested in a relational context. This research followed from a review of literature regarding the analysis of "good moments" (Mahrer, 1988;Mahrer, Dessaulles, Nadler, Gervaize, & Sterner, 1987;Mahrer, Nadler, Gervaize, & Markow, 1986) or "significant change events" in the process of psychotherapy (Elliott, 1983a;Elliott, James, Reimschuessel, Cislo, & Sack, 1985). In particular, the method of Brief Structured Recall (Elliott & Shapiro, 1988) seemed applicable to the study of values.…”

What's in a Good Moment: A Hermeneutic Study of Psychotherapy Values Across Levels of Psychotherapy Training

“…Building on Elliott's research concerning "significant events" (Elliott, 1983(Elliott, , 1985Elliott, James, Reimschuessel, Cislo, & Sack, 1985) and Mahrer's studies of "good moments" (Mahrer, Nadler, Dessaulles, Gervaize, & Sterner, 1987;Mahrer, Nadler, Gervaize, & Markow, 1986), this method entailed having participants view a videotaped therapy session for the purpose of identifying and describing good moments. These valuative descriptions were transcribed, and then examined in relation to the session segments-that is, the therapist or client actions-to which descriptions referred.…”

What is Good Psychotherapy?

“…Research in this area has proceeded in several directions. Mahrer and his colleagues (Mahrer, Dessaulles, Nadler, Gervaize, & Sterner, 1987;Mahrer, Nadler, Gervaize, & Markow, 1986) have attempted to catalogue good moments by extracting implicitly and explicitly defined moments in existing psychotherapy research. Rennie (1990Rennie ( , 1992Rennie ( , 1994aRennie ( , 1994b has explored the subjective experience of psychotherapy clients to discern good therapy from the client's perspective.…”