Here’s a great keynote presentation by Bruce Wampold, who has been one of the key researchers comparing the efficacy of different psychotherapies and identifying common factors shared between psychotherapy approaches:
(For the curious, here are his slides from that presentation)
Main takeaway: Better THERAPISTS get better results, not better treatment modalities.
Things that barely have any effect on treatment outcome:
- The specific treatment methods used
- How well the therapist adheres to the treatment model being used
The key factors in therapy effectiveness are:
- Working alliance (mutual agreement and collaboration on goal.)
- Empathic relationship
- Positive regard / affirmation
- Therapist congruence / genuineness
Key factors in therapist effectiveness:
- Verbal fluency (how fluently and interestingly you can express yourself)
- Affective perception (How well you can perceive affect, even if the patient is avoiding it or not aware of it)
- Affective expressiveness and modulation
So, if you want to get better as a therapist, the things to focus on are improving your ability to perceive, modulate, and express emotion; to foster working alliance; to respond empathically and affirmingly; and to cultivate your own genuineness and congruence.
Developing new intervention tools and techniques has, for the most part, not been shown to significantly improve your treatment outcomes.