Citation

Richards PS, Lonborg SD. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 1996; 64(4): 701-711.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/0022-006X.64.4.701

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The authors developed a measure for categorizing the nature of the topic that clients and therapists discuss from moment to moment during psychotherapy. The Counseling Topic Classification System (CTCS) contains 55 topics and 8 emotional categories. It was used to code the thematic content of Donald Meichenbaum's and Hans Strupp's initial therapy sessions with a client named Richard. Our findings provided preliminary evidence that the CTCS is useful for coding the core topic of initial therapy sessions and that thematic content may be an important process and contextual variable.

METHODS are described for studying thematic content as a contextual variable and for presenting change process and discovery-oriented research findings so that they are more clinically meaningful.

Language: en

Keywords

human; counseling; suicide; identity; psychotherapy; depression; anger; empathy; article; life event; love; behavior therapy; cognitive therapy; emotion; doctor patient relation; psychotherapist