Research on the process of change in psychotherapy and the different therapeutic approaches: an analysis of cognitive and emotional mechanism

Abstract

Currently, research on the effectiveness of different types of psychotherapy shows that psychotherapy works for different types of disorders. However, there are still several issues that remain to be solved, for example, cases that do not respond to treatment, as well as cases of deterioration. For this purpose, it is necessary to complement research about the effectiveness of therapy with process studies (process and process-outcome research). So this paper aims to: make a brief summary of the current state of research on the mechanisms of change (emotional and cognitive) in psychotherapy; analyze how process research has been articulated with theoretical models. The analysis of different studies seems to empirically validate the role of mediation that several mechanisms seem to have in promoting therapeutic change. However, it seems more difficult to confirm the hypothesis that these mechanisms are specific to therapies that intentionally promote them. The implications of these results for future research on therapeutic change will be discussed.