Mental representation of therapy: A longitudinal assessment in a cognitive psychotherapy training group

The research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy training programmes has greatly increased (Freiheit, Overholser, 1997; Beutler, Kendall 1995, Ravitz, Silver, 2004), but a still open research issue is how to properly evaluate trainees' therapeutic attitude, clinical skills acquisition, improvement in interpersonal attitude and relational style (Alberts, Edelstein, 1990; Manring et al 2003). Researches have been done to assess subjective changes in coping strategies to stressful interpersonal situations and adaptation to the learning experience (Kuyken et al. 2003). In our opinion a relevant dimension of change is the "subjective therapists/therapy representations": that is to say the subjective presuppositions concerning the therapist's role, skills, goals, behaviours, attitudes, thoughts, emotions and expectations. The aim of our research is to evaluate trainee's changes during a four years course on the above mentioned dimensions. Data presented are a subset of the wider results of this still ongoing research and concern the modifications in the self description of cognitive-constructive training student between the first and the third year of a four year (2002-2006) course. Subjects: 21 students, mean age 29, range 27-45, 4 male, 18 female. Training lessons schedule: Friday and Saturday bimonthly. First year general lessons on cognitive - constructive psychotherapy, second year and following: use of clinical role-play, third year direct experience with patients and regular case-supervision. Assessment: Therapist Changing Profile questionnaire to assess students' pre-assumption about therapist activity, emotions felt in the therapeutic sessions, subjective view of psychotherapy structure and goals, pre-post results comparison.