ABSTRACT
I remember reading the following sentence in an abstract of a journal article which has stayed with me. The study was looking at various predictors of dropout and outcome in cognitive therapy for depression in a private practice setting (Persons et al. , 1988: 557). The sentence read as follows: ‘In spite of significant improvement, 50% of patients terminated treatment prematurely.’ Now while this statement can be read a number of ways, it does show that a significant number of clients in this study left therapy once they had made significant improvement while the authors considered that these clients had ended therapy prematurely. Of course, therapists have their views concerning client functioning and dysfunctioning and these views are coloured by professional knowledge. Maluccio (1979), in his classic study, found that therapists were less happy than their clients were when the latter terminated ‘prematurely’ because, while the latter were happy with what they achieved, the former could see all manner of issues that needed to be dealt with, but weren’t. However, the point here is that in single-session work, it is important to prioritize your client’s view over your own as therapist and while you may see areas that your clients need to work on, it is important that you let them be the principal judge of what it is in their interests to deal with.
