Therapeutic goals in psychological medicine - State of research and development of a standardised self-rating instrument

From the patient's as well as from the therapist's point of view goals of t herapy undoubtedly play an important role in all fields of psychological me dicine (psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychosomatic medicine). On the other ha nd, there is a substantial lack of systematic i.e. empirical studies on thi s issue. Giving an overview on the available scientific literature we start by characterising therapeutic goals as a secondary psychological construct ion. Therapeutic goals and their multiple associations and different aspect s of psychotherapy are discussed. However, a variety of definitions of ther apeutic goals, often influenced by the therapeutic orientation of the autho rs, make it difficult to integrate concepts and to compare findings. Hence, we focus on those results which were found in relation to general concepts , i.e, beyond specific theoretical approaches. Furthermore, we discuss the pros and cons of individual measures of therapeutic goals compared with sta ndardised self-rating instruments. Finally, we underline the lack of studie s on therapeutic goals in the psychiatric sphere and report on some results of our own pilot study on the Personal Goals Questionnaire in psychiatric inpatients.