ABSTRACT
Beck et al. (1979b) de®ned the therapeutic stance in cognitive therapy as `collaborative empiricism'. Padesky (2004) suggests that behavioural therapy took an empirical stance towards therapeutic activity. Behavioural empiricism, however, referred only to the behaviour of the therapist. The therapist had set the terms and de®ned the questions of what had to be found out, and the client was reduced to the position of nearly incidental data collector. It is hard to agree completely with Padesky (2004, p. 7), however, that collaboration can be understood as `an equal working partnership.' Strictly de®ned, `collaboration' merely means `working together', and people can work together when they see themselves as having quite different roles, even roles with different status. Martin Buber, for example, despite advocating the relevance of an `I±thou' relationship for therapy, could not agree with Rogers that a relationship where one party seeks unreciprocated help from another can really be `equal' (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990). It is rare, for a client to match the skills of a well-practised therapist in challenging negative thoughts. Beck and Emery (1985, p. 175) stress the different but interlocking roles:
The cognitive therapist implies that there is a team approach to the solution of the patient's problem: that is, a therapeutic alliance where the patient supplies raw data (reports on thoughts and behaviour . . .) while the therapist provides structure and expertise on how to solve the problems. The emphasis is on working on problems rather than on
therapist one' in
for a p. 221) makes it quite clear that it is unhelpful so to do:
It is useful to conceive of the patient±therapist relationship as a joint effort. It is not the therapist's function to reform the patient: rather his role is working with the patient against `it', the patient's problem. Placing emphasis on solving problems, rather than his presumed de®cits or bad habits, helps the patient to examine his dif®culties with more detachment and makes him less prone to experience shame, a sense of inferiority and defensiveness.
