Contemporary Trends in Psychotherapeutic Research: I. Research of thePsychotherapeutic Effect

Overview

The paper presents contemporary research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy. It deals brieflywith the historical context of research of the effect of psychotherapy and the contemporary trendof empirical evidence of the effectiveness of psychotherapy. It also presents the tools for measuringthe effectiveness or psychotherapy. Special attention is devoted to the methodology of randomizedcontrolled clinical trials. It presents also alternatives of experimental clinical tests such as:natural research into the therapeutic effect, satisfaction of patients with psychotherapy, experimentalcase-records, qualitative investigation of the effect, qualitative evaluation of case-records.The paper deals also briefly with the so-called dosage effect of psychotherapy. It presents also thetype of research which investigates the influence of variables on the part of the therapist andclient which influence the effect of psychotherapy.

Key words:
psychotherapy, research in psychotherapy, research into the effect of psychotherapy,methodology.