{"title":"How Do We Decide Which of Two Case Formulations Is Correct? Commentary on Westerman and Critchfield et al.","authors":"S. Messer","doi":"10.14713/PCSP.V17I1.2090","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This commentary takes a meta-view of the articles in this module by Westerman (2021a), and by Critchfield, Dobner-Pereira and Stucker (2021a), which offer two overlapping but also different formulations of the same case. It raises the question of whether there is only one true formulation of a clinical case ( correspondence theory ), or whether any one of several would qualify as accurate ( coherence theory ). A third alternative is that the truth-value of a formulation is a function of its ability to predict which therapist interventions will most help the client ( pragmatic theory ). A study is described in which the relative accuracy of two different formulations of the same case was put to the test in predicting which therapist interventions led to client progress. I propose that the current authors compare the pragmatic value of their formulations in a similar manner.","PeriodicalId":53239,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy","volume":"17 1","pages":"104-108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.14713/PCSP.V17I1.2090","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This commentary takes a meta-view of the articles in this module by Westerman (2021a), and by Critchfield, Dobner-Pereira and Stucker (2021a), which offer two overlapping but also different formulations of the same case. It raises the question of whether there is only one true formulation of a clinical case ( correspondence theory ), or whether any one of several would qualify as accurate ( coherence theory ). A third alternative is that the truth-value of a formulation is a function of its ability to predict which therapist interventions will most help the client ( pragmatic theory ). A study is described in which the relative accuracy of two different formulations of the same case was put to the test in predicting which therapist interventions led to client progress. I propose that the current authors compare the pragmatic value of their formulations in a similar manner.