ABSTRACT
Psychotherapy works. This has been demonstrated by a number of authors focusing on outcome research (most recently, Joyce, Wolfaardt, Sribney, & Aylwin, 2006; Ogrodniczuk, 2006). Psychotherapy is superior to the absence of treatment, with recovery and improvement rates of about 60 percent and 65 percent, respectively, if no distinction is made between therapeutic orientation and diagnostic groups and with a 5 percent to 10 percent patient deterioration rate (Lambert, 2007). Nevertheless, the exact mechanisms of change are still not known. To learn more about this psychotherapy process, research is needed. This article introduces a theory and the corresponding model for its empirical assessment with computer-assisted text analysis, developed over the last 20 years, that maps the therapeutic process and enables the process researcher to identify clinical processes and significant clinical events, to analyze them in detail, and to relate them to concepts stemming from neuroscience, experimental, and cognitive psychology. A critical overview of studies that provide first evidence and steps of validation for both theory and model concludes the article.
