The importance of the theoretical framework in the formulation of clinical inferences in psychotherapy

Abstract

This study explores the importance of psychotherapists' theoretical framework as it pertains to the development of their clinical inferences and construction of working inferences. Therapists in this study came from two different theoretical groups: those with cognitive training and those with psychoanalytic training. After presenting inferences in relation to an initial session of a psychotherapeutic treatment, psychotherapists' inferences were analyzed by a group of judges using Q-sort items (Jones, 1985). The analysis of the inferences indicates that when both the content and style of the therapists' inferences are classified using the Q items criteria two distinctive groups of inferences appear. Each theoretical group produced a different and specific type of inferences.