RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING BASED ON EXPERIENCES WITH MANUAL-GUIDED TRAINING AND RESEARCH - AN INTRODUCTION

Teaching psychotherapy is a cardinal purpose of all postgraduate train ing programs in the mental health disciplines. These disciplines-psych ology, psychiatry, social work, and counseling-are presumed to be buil t on a foundation of empirical knowledge. However, as noted in several of the following articles, this foundation does not firmly underlie t he domain of psychotherapy training. Put bluntly, we have little evide nce that our teaching methods (courses and supervision) change student s' behavior in the direction of training objectives or foster effectiv e therapeutic performance.