SARA’S CLINICAL CASE: CLINICAL AND RESEARCH OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHANGE PROCESS IN A TIME-LIMITED PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

The process of change has been guiding research in the psychological field for some decades now. In particular, what stimulates the researchers are the reflection between outcome and process indicators within the psychotherapy pathways and the identification of the factors that determine the change. A process-outcome research on psychotherapies, conducted according to the theoretical-methodological model of the SB-APP, Sequential Brief Adlerian Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, was started at the Psychotherapy Unit of Settimo T.se - ASL TO4 Piedmont Region, a research that is still being published. The many measurement instruments used in this research, some clinician-reports and other patient-reports, have explored different clinical constructs: symptomatology, levels of psychopathological functioning (PFLs), mentalization abilities, therapeutic alliance, quality of countertransference and analysis of the technical instruments used in the different sessions of the therapy. The compilation of these scales, administered at intervals of 5 or 10 sessions, compiled by both the patient and the therapist, made it possible to detect not only the outcomes of the process, but also to observe some aspects of the psychotherapeutic process. This article proposes the clinical history of Sara and her psychotherapy, which is part of the larger research sample, with reference to the naturalistic/observational methodology of conducting a single-case study