The acquisition of psychotherapeutic skill: An empirical study

Abstract

The acquisition of psychotherapy skillfulness is an important aspect of training programs in psychiatry and clinical psychology. Psychotherapy supervision is employed to teach and monitor the development of these clinical skills. The Supervisor Report (SR) is a questionnaire designed to systematically assess therapeutic behaviors and global psychotherapeutic skillfulness of therapists conducting psychodynamic psychotherapy. SRs were employed to examine changes in trainees' skillfulness over the course of training. T-tests were applied to evaluate differences between the average scores of trainees in the first half of their training compared to the last half of their training. Comparisons of the scores for Psychotherapeutic Techniques and assessments of Global Skillfulness were in the predicted direction: Trainees in the advanced portion of their training were rated as more skillful than at the beginning. This study provides some evidence that psychotherapy skillfulness is acquired over time in training.

The observed impact of training on competence in clinical supervision

“…Other reviewers have reached similar conclusions about the research desiderata, also commenting on the need for manipulation checks on the behaviour of the supervisor (Fleming, Oliver, & Bolton, 1996) and on the importance of demonstrating how critical variables, such as performance feedback or other training methods, contribute to the training effort (Binder, 1993;Jensen, Parsons, & Reid, 1998). Related to this kind of attention to the supervisor, research should attempt to demonstrate how the training of supervisors impacts on the supervisee (Krasner, Howard, & Brown, 1998). This is arguably the principle criterion of successful training (Holloway & Neufeldt, 1995).…”

How Should We Best Train Clinical Psychology Supervisors? A Delphi Survey

“…While it would be unwise to ignore feedback regarding the likely attitude of potential consumers towards more demanding methods of learning such as the review of tape-recordings of actual supervision sessions, the efficacy of supervisor training programmes is likely to be diluted if no strategies are employed to promote the transfer of skills learned on supervisor training modules into everyday practice (Green, 1997;Davis, Thomson, Oxman and Haynes, 1992). Furthermore the provision of systematic feedback on performance will likely benefit not just the supervisee seeking to acquire psychotherapeutic competence (Krasner, Howard and Brown, 1998) but their supervisors as well (Williams, 1994).…”

Assessing and predicting supervisors' evaluations of psychotherapists – an empirical study

“…Figure 1 gives an overview of the variables that have been shown to influence the supervisors' evaluations (see Ellis & Ladany, 1997;Guy, 1987;Kanfer et al, 1996;Krasner, Howard, & Brown, 1998;Stoltenberg & Delworth, 1987;Stoltenberg & Mc Neill, 1997;Wampold & Holloway, 1997).…”

“…Later, a more cooperative attitude characterizes the contact between supervisor and therapist. A study by Krasner et al (1998) indicated that therapists with more therapeutic experience were evaluated better by their supervisors than therapists with less experience. A study by Ringer, Blaser, Thommen and Heim (1990) showed that as therapists progressed in their behavior training program, they improved their ability to form good therapeutic relationships and to structure a goal-oriented therapeutic process.…”