A Process-Based Approach to Transtheoretical Clinical Research and Training

Abstract

Background: The science and practice of psychopathology and psychological intervention of today is more like an island archipelago than it is a single land mass, and connections between different traditions are both limited and fraught with misunderstanding. Method: Our analysis and solution to the problem is process-based therapy (PBT). PBT defines psychopathology as failed adaptation processes to a given context. Therapy involves adaptation through context-dependent or context-altering applications of biopsychosocial strategies that allows a goal to be met. Results: This coherent approach to more transtheoretical and integrative concepts of clinical training and practice provides a firm foundation by targeting biopsychosocial processes of change, analyzing these processes using an idiographic complex network analytic approach, and organizing findings on the intellectual agora of multi-dimensional and multi-level evolutionary science. Conclusion: PBT is a new empirical form of functional analysis, resulting in interventions and trainings that are built on elements or kernels of direct relevance to client’s specific needs. In PBT, case formulation continues as long as treatment persists.