Center for Psychotherapy Research

The Center for Psychotherapy Research consists of researchers from the Psychology Research Institute and the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno. It is dedicated to the implementation of research projects, as well as connecting the world of research and practice in the field of psychotherapy and counselling.

More about the Center

News

4 Dec

What does successful psychotherapy look like through the eyes of clients?

Success in psychotherapy is often assessed as the relief of symptoms such as anxiety or depression. However, our qualitative meta-analysis of 177 studies shows that symptom relief accounts for only a fraction of the changes that clients describe after psychotherapy. Beyond symptom relief, clients talk about a deeper self-understanding, improved relationships with others, or a greater ability to actively influence their lives. These reports, based on the testimonies of 2908 clients, suggest that psychotherapy is not just a treatment of psychopathology, but also a process that promotes fundamental transformations in the perception of self, others and the world around us, and the ability to lead a fulfilling and meaningful life. These findings highlight the need for more comprehensive approaches to assessing psychotherapy outcomes that capture the overall quality of life and the unique meaning of therapeutic change for each client beyond symptom relief.

9 Oct

Active inference and therapeutic change

Active inference is a theoretical framework from the realm of cognitive science, neuroscience, and computational psychiatry that helps in modelling perception, decision making, and learning. It portrays a person as someone who is not just a passive recipient of information, but whose internal (or generative) model actively shapes how they perceive and interpret the world around them. Clients' mental difficulties or psychopathologies are then seen as the result of an inappropriately "configured" (or suboptimal) generative model. We were interested whether therapeutic change itself can be explained within this theoretical framework. Our review study offers an answer: We identified a total of 22 studies that use the language of active inference to describe the psychotherapeutic process.

16 Sep

We hosted the 6th Joint European & UK SPR Chapters Conference

On September 12-14, the Faculty of Social Studies hosted the 6th Joint European & UK SPR Chapters Conference. Although the atmosphere of the conference was affected by the flood situation, overall it was a very successful event with almost 200 participants from 27 countries. A big thank you to all the volunteers from the Department of Psychology for ensuring the smooth running of the event, to Matyho chálka for the excellent catering and to the VIDA! science centre for providing the venue for the closing banquet.

3 Sep

How do psychotherapists work with faith and religion?

In our qualitative meta-analysis of 52 primary studies, we found that spirituality and religiosity influence not only the therapeutic process but also therapists' professional identity, and are also reflected in the broader context of the therapeutic profession, including training. The psychotherapists in the primary studies differed in the way they linked or, conversely, separated spirituality and religiosity from the psychotherapy profession. While for some these were two inseparable and harmoniously related aspects of life, for others faith and religion were incompatible with their therapeutic work, and for others they represented resources that could be integrated into therapy to varying degrees as needed. Also, in the therapeutic process itself, faith and religion manifested themselves in many different ways, some of which appeared to help the therapeutic process, while others appeared to hinder it.