Psychotherapy trainees’ epistemological assumptions influencing research-practice integration

Abstract

Over the last few decades a growing number of psychotherapy scholars as well as psychotherapy researchers have joined a paradigm shift, moving from a reductionist to a complexity-oriented epistemology. Many authors recognize that when human subjectivity is the object of intervention and study, it is appropriate to resist simplification and to assume a more complex approach. While this paradigm shift is taking place not only in psychology but also in other disciplines, many psychotherapists still share the assumption that psychotherapy practice and psychotherapy research have opposite values; hence, they are worlds that cannot be reconciled. Considering this as one of the main reasons preventing a useful integration of evidence-based practice and clinical training in psychotherapy, we conducted an online survey of 126 Italian trainees from three differently-oriented psychotherapy institutes (cognitive-behavioral, relational-psychoanalytic and relational-systemic) to explore the epistemology underling the clinical and research practices. After presenting a clinical vignette, we asked questions about diagnostic considerations, case formulations, and treatment plans; we also asked questions about participants’ involvement in research projects or in research methodology courses and about willingness to be involved in future research studies in their clinical practice. We found some significant differences among trainees with different orientations, but in general most of the responses reflected a positivistic epistemology underlying both clinical and research activities. These findings suggest that a deeper awareness of one’s own epistemological assumptions could help trainees foster a more theory-coherent and research-informed clinical practice.

Analysis of General Practitioners’ Attitudes and Beliefs about Psychological Intervention and the Medicine-Psychology Relationship in Primary Care: Toward a New Comprehensive Approach to Primary Health Care

“…On the contrary, psychological intervention does not have the direct reduction in symptoms as its primary objective, but rather the activation of the subject's resources to re-read the experience underlying the symptoms, although this can only work with the subject's active involvement. In this sense, the promotion of people's resources and well-being, in sickness and health, is a core aim that the psychologist's competencies are able to achieve [47,48]. In our survey, GPs attributed this task primarily to counselors and less to psychologists.…”

Hanno ucciso l’Uomo Ragno. Nascita, splendore, declino di una fase mitica della psicopatologia clinica e della psicoterapia. C’è ancora margine per una loro dignità scientifica? Una proposta connessionista complessa

“…What I will emphasize is the transversal fact that once the students became therapists, with few differences between models, they were more interested in the strictly operative aspects, the dreaded 'good practices', rather than paying attention to the coherence between acquired theoretical concepts and implemented technical choices. This would explain the lack of awareness of the manoeuvres that induce a targeted and conscious change in the therapeutic process implemented (Negri et al, 2019). This result, despite not being encouraging, is not surprising if one considers a background noise that mattifies reflections on the concept of psychopathology.…”

Psychoanalysis and Interdisciplinarity With Non-analytic Psychotherapeutic Approaches Through the Lens of Dialectics

“…In the last decades, there was a radical shift, and many scholars suggested modern Hermeneutics and post-modernism as better epistemologies. Others seek a more intermediate position between science and hermeneutics (Makari, 2000;Negri et al, 2019). Fusella (2014) argues that psychoanalysis has situated itself among the other disciplines as a hybrid science, not quite a pure hermeneutic on the one hand and not quite a pure science.…”