Literaturangabe: Tschacher W, Scheier C, and Grawe K (1998). Order and Pattern Formation in Psychotherapy. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 2, 195-215.
Abstract
In an empirical analysis of the dynamics of psychotherapy processes,
concepts and tools from self-organization theory are applied.
Our focus is on pattern formation in the 'therapy system', i.e.
the system constituted by the interaction dynamics of therapist
and patient. The hypothesis of pattern formation explored is based
on data sets of 28 psychotherapy courses (10 behavioral, 3 client-centered,
9 heuristic, 6 schema-oriented; 40 to 90 weekly sessions). Patients'
and therapists' therapy session records are analyzed (33 variables
addressing various aspects of the therapeutic relationship, of
progress within and outside the therapy setting). Multivariate
methods are implemented to test the key hypothesis of self-organization
theory, namely the reduction of degrees of freedom of a system.
Consistent with this hypothesis, a significant reduction of degrees
of freedom is found when the initial and final sessions of the
therapies are compared. Correspondingly, 'Landsberg order' increased
significantly in the course of therapies. Given these findings,
the explorative question of how this self-organizing property
relates to therapy outcome is investigated. We find a significant
positive association with various outcome measures, such as: therapist
and clients evaluations of success (direct change measures), feelings
of guilt, anxiety, social potence, depression (pre-post effect
sizes), and others. These results suggest that order is related
to therapy outcome. In our interpretation, order is a dynamical
attribute of the therapeutic alliance to be considered as a promising
therapy process variable.
Keywords: Psychotherapy process; self-organization; process-outcome
research; entropy; pattern formation