ABSTRACT
The theme of this edited volume is to focus on the process of patient change in psychotherapy with two perspectives in mind: the perspective of the clinical process between the therapist and patient, and a second perspective of capturing the process and outcome of change empirically with the tools of research. In this chapter, the authors focus on the clinical and empirical development of a psychodynamic individual psychotherapy for personality pathology called transference-focused psychotherapy. We highlight both the advantages and disadvantages of the randomized clinical trial as typically executed which yields little information about the individual patient. By the utilization of a detailed individual case nested in a larger treatment study, we illustrate an empirical approach that provides information not only about changes in the patients as a group but also in-depth information about the trajectory of change in the individual patient. Our case study that combines clinical and empirical information can be compared to the typical psychoanalytic case study.
