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Some cancer survivors report positive subjective changes they describe as “life transforming.” We used a grounded theory approach to identify the content, underlying process, and identifying characteristics of self-defined “life-transforming” changes (LTCs) reported by 9 cancer survivors. To actualize their hopes for improvement, participants used a self-guided process centered on pragmatic action: researching options, gaining experience, and frankly evaluating results. Many participants discovered unanticipated personal abilities and resources, and those became highly useful in coping with other challenges apart from cancer. This made the increased personal abilities and resources “life transforming” rather than being substantially limited to reducing cancer-related problems. The action-oriented features and processes of LTCs seemed to be more fully described by experiential learning theory than by posttraumatic growth and coping. Supportive intervention to facilitate positive change processes could decrease suffering and enhance positive psychosocial and spiritual outcomes for cancer survivors.

Therapist-patient interactions in 16 cases of brief psychotherapy were examined. Three types of therapist intervention (patient-therapist interpretations, patient-significant other interpretations, and clarifications) were compared in terms of the frequency of patient affective or defensive behavior that occurred in the three minutes following each. In addition, therapist-intervention and patient-response episodes were investigated to determine their relationship to outcome at termination of therapy. Results indicate that patient-therapist interpretations followed by patient affect bears a significant relationship to improvement at termination, whereas an intervention (of any type) followed by defensiveness correlates negatively with outcome. These findings suggest that an examination of patient-therapist interaction episodes may be more productive than examining process variables in isolation.

These data indicate that brief adaptive psychotherapy and short-term dynamic psychotherapy are effective for patients with certain types of personality disorder and that the two therapy approaches do not differ in overall outcome.

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