A “Motion Portrait” of a Psychodynamic Treatment of an 11-Year-Old Girl: Exploring Interrelations of Psychotherapy Process and Outcome Using the Child Psychotherapy Q-Set

Abstract

In the sciences, new conjectures and theories generally do lead to innovations of method, since new means are necessary to “see” or investigate hitherto unknown entities or structures. Galison and Stump (1996), as cited by Rustin (2001, p. 81) Research into psychotherapy necessarily and inevitably changes the nature of the therapy it investigates. Fonagy (2005), as cited by Pruetzel-Thomas (2006, p. 8) Clinicians engaged in thinking about the nature of the therapeutic process in work with children frequently state concern that traditional research measures fail to do justice to the complex interactions that take place between therapist and child. The Child Psychotherapy Q-Set (CPQ; Schneider and Jones, 2004) is an instrument designed to describe psychotherapy process with children ages 3–13 in clinically meaningful ways and in a form suitable for quantitative comparison and analysis. The CPQ offers a common language to describe process and therapeutic action that could allow a mutual engagement with questions of therapeutic process and its relation to outcome for clinicians and researchers. Here we briefly describe this method and its application to study therapy process and outcome with an 11-year-old girl in psychodynamic psychotherapy.