ABSTRACT
As discussed earlier, general effects are the effects produced by the common factors. The Contextual Model posits that the common factors are therapeutic in that they are responsible for therapeutic change. Accordingly, indicators of the common factors should be associated with outcomes of psychotherapy. However, a global prediction of this sort is a weak conjecture for a number of reasons that will become apparent as we present the evidence for general effects in this chapter. Of course, one of the major challenges to the simple prediction of an association of this type is that “correlation does not mean causation,” and an association may indeed be an artifact due to the fact that the outcome may well be causing the detection of the common factor, or it may be a third vari able is causing both the common factor and outcome (DeRubeis, Brotman, & Gibbons, 2005). One of the characteristics of a progressive research programme, as discussed in Chapter 3, is that it responds to challenges with new conjectures that are then investigated. In this way, we will see that the Contextual Model is able to anticipate the results from studies designed to examine the challenges.
