Long‐term psychodynamic psychotherapy in a face‐to‐face versus videoconferencing setting: A single case study

Abstract

Objective: Due to the coronavirus pandemic and crisis, psychotherapists around the world were forced to switch to video-or tele-based treatments overnight. To date, only a few studies on the effectiveness of video-based psychodynamic psychotherapy via the Internet exist. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to examine symptom improvement, therapeutic relationship, nonverbal synchrony processes, and intersession processes within a systematic single case design and compare face-to-face to video-based approaches in long-term psychodynamic-oriented psychotherapy.Methods: We examined 85 sessions of a client with major depression whose psychodynamic psychotherapy changed from a face-to-face setting to a video-based setting. Video recordings were analyzed using motion energy analysis, and nonverbal synchrony was computed using a surrogate synchrony approach. Time series analyses were performed to analyze changes in symptom severity, therapeutic relationship, and intersession processes. Results:The results showed that symptom severity improved descriptively, but not significantly, across the