Client identified significant events in a successful therapy case: The link between the significant events and outcome

Abstract

Significant events research represents a specific approach to studying client-identified important moments in the therapy process. Significant events studies in some instances look at the relationship of the prevalent type of events and therapy outcome. However, they normally do not link significant events with the progress achieved in therapy. This study addresses the issue of whether therapeutic change in a successful therapy case is visible in helpful significant events throughout the course of therapy. For that purpose, 59 client identified helpful significant events from one therapy case were analysed, namely the session transcripts and transcripts from subsequent post-session interviews wherein the client and the therapist reflected on the events. The qualitative analysis of the discussed content, the therapeutic interaction within the events and the helpful impact in the events resulted in a taxonomy of 14 mutually exclusive types of events. Significant events were focused either on the building of the therapeutic relationship or on in-session changes potentially contributing to the outcome. Some of the events which contributed to the building of therapeutic relationship also provided corrective interpersonal and emotional experience. The therapeutic benefits reported by the client in post-session interviews seemed to conceptually fit client improvement as observed in the client stated presenting issues and the changes reported in the post-therapy interview.