Personal Construct Psychology, constructivism and psychotherapy Research

Luis Botella

Dept. of Psychology, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona (Spain)

Abstract
Psychotherapy research has advanced significantly in recent years, both in terms of outcome and process research. At the same time constructivism has emerged as an approach to a vari-ety of social and human sciences, including clinical psychology and psychotherapy. However, most of the growing body of work labelled “constructivist” tends to emphasise theory rather than empirically-based findings. Since constructivism embodies not only a new approach to the practice of psychotherapy, but to research and knowledge as well, it would be necessary to foster an ongoing debate about the question of what does it mean to conduct psychotherapy research from a constructivist standpoint. This presentation will be an invitation to reflect either on the main results of research programmes or on the methodological and theoretical issues implicit in constructivist psychotherapy research.

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