What Happens in Therapy with Sexual Offenders? A Model of Process Research

Abstract

This paper presents two studies (one single case and one comparative study) examining change processes within individual therapy sessions as well as during the course of treatment. The Therapeutic Cycle Model (TCM), developed for general psychotherapy to objectify change events in the course of psychotherapies, is applied to transcribed tape recordings of therapy sessions with sexual offenders. The TCM focuses on emotional experience and cognitive mastery and uses computer assisted text analysis. In addition to the TCM approach clinical ratings are used as independent criteria. The predicted relationship between the phases of the TCM and scores on the respective scales of the clinical ratings were supported.

Forensic psychologists should use the behavioral experiment to facilitate cognitive change in clients who have offended

“…In recent years, forensic professionals have noted that a rational consideration of alternative and prosocial cognition may not be enough to instigate genuine cognitive change (Marshall et al, 2011;Pfäfflin, Böhmer, Cornehl, & Mergenthaler 2005) and that therapists need to put much more emphasis on the behavioral elements of CBT (Fernandez, Shingler, & Marshall, 2006). Within forensic psychology, in particular, therapists can easily fall into the trap of failing to undertake complex experiential techniques associated with cognitive restructuring due to the challenging nature of both their client group and the risk aversive context in which they work (see Gannon & Ward, 2014).…”

“…Yet many CBT techniques imported from mainstream clinical psychology by forensic psychologists (e.g., thought monitoring) fail to adequately convince the client to change their beliefs. Put simply, clients sincerely believe in the validity of their problematic cognitions meaning that even sophisticated and rational consideration of alternative prosocial cognitions is unlikely to instigate genuine cognitive change (Marshall et al, 2011;Pfäfflin et al, 2005). In mainstream clinical psychology, however, CBT psychologists dealing with some of the most highly entrenched and problematic cognitions implement an effective technique for facilitating adaptive cognitive change that is little used by forensic psychologists: that of the Behavioral Experiment (BE).…”

Understanding Therapeutic Change Process Research Through Multilevel Modeling and Text Mining

“…Many applications of text mining are still centered around finding key moments in the therapeutic process (cf. Lepper and Mergenthaler, 2005; Pfäfflin et al, 2005; Fontao and Mergenthaler, 2008), which is also a common approach in TCPR (e.g., the “Significant Events Approach” in Elliott, 2010).…”

The measurement of individual change: A didactic account of an idiographic approach

“…In addition to trying to identify a patient's degree of change over treatment, it is also useful to explore the process of treatment (Howard, Moras, Brill, Martinovich, & Lutz, 1996;Pfafflin, Bohmer, Cornehl, & Mergenthaler, 2005). Within the general psychotherapy literature there has been much work on identifying the factors that promote change (Grawe, 1997;Greenberg & Pinsof, 1986) and there is a sense that research in this area needs to reflect the ''real world of therapy practice'' (Goldfried & Wolfe, 1996).…”