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BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access April 25, 2016

Therapist Effects and Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapy

  • Len Sperry
From the journal Open Theology

Abstract

Research on therapist effectiveness (i.e., therapist effects) is important for spiritually oriented psychotherapy to mature and flourish as a specialty. Therapist effects are described and compared to treatment effects, and then a research-based profile of the effective therapist is sketched. This characterization is similar in both spiritually-oriented psychotherapy and secular psychotherapy, which has no spiritual orientation. The challenge for this specialty is for research to integrate both therapist effects and treatment effects to inform psychotherapy training. This discussion is framed within Alan Bergin‘s (1980) “hope“ that the psychotherapy profession would become more comprehensive and more effective.



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Received: 2016-1-14
Accepted: 2016-3-17
Published Online: 2016-4-25

©2016 Len Sperry

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

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