Personalized Context-Sensitive Emotion-Focused Therapy

Abstract

Despite the many years of research dedicated to psychotherapy, therapy outcomes do not seem to be improving over the years. One of the approaches that are trying to address this issue is the personalization of therapy according to client characteristics. Most of the approaches to personalization in psychotherapy are atheoretical, i.e., attempting to be applicable across theoretical approaches. There are limited attempts to develop theoretically coherent personalization within existing therapeutic approaches. This paper attempts to outline a framework for a theoretically coherent approach to personalization in emotion-focused therapy (EFT) that would also account for the client’s everyday-life interactions. EFT is an experiential-humanistic approach and thus a framework for personalization in EFT is also relevant for personalization approaches in other exploratory therapies. This paper introduces a framework for personalized, context-sensitive, emotion-focused therapy EFT (P-EFT). The framework covers three domains: (1) appropriate indication and adjustment of EFT to client goals, preferences, characteristics; (2) optimizing the therapist’s therapeutic work and being with the client; and (3) supporting in-session processes by facilitating outside-session client engagement/practices in the client’s everyday life. An outline of how research findings as well as a data informed approach could inform all of these three domains is also provided.