Last July, about a week after my return
from California after the two months I spent helping care for my mother, I gave
my first keynote presentation to a conference of the World Association for
Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies. The talk, given in Antwerp, Belgium, was the basis
for an article just published in Person-Centered
and Experiential Psychotherapies. It
combines selected results from two studies: the 2008 humanistic-experiential
psychotherapy outcome meta-analysis that Beth
Freire and I carried out with support from British Association for the
Person-Centre Approach; and the First Strathclyde Social Anxiety Project, largely
funded by grants from the New Professors Fund by the University of Strathclyde
and by Counselling Unit internal funds.
I am deeply appreciative of the help I
received in carrying out the research on which this article is based, including
the clients, volunteer therapists, students, research associates, and members
of the Social Anxiety Study Group, University of Strathclyde, 2006-2012, especially
my colleagues Brian Rodgers, Beth Freire, Susan Stephen, Lorna Carrick, Lucia
Berdondini, and Mick Cooper. In
addition, Les Greenberg and Ann Weiser Cornell made helpful contributions to
the theory sections of this article.
Finally, I have dedicated this article to the memory of my mother, Ann
Helena Kearney Elliott, 7 April 1929 – 22 June 2012.
Although the article has been available on
the publisher’s website since March, it was very nice to receive the hard copy
of it the other day.
Reference:
Elliott, R. (2013). Person-Centered-Experiential
Psychotherapy for Anxiety Difficulties: Theory, Research and Practice. Person-Centered
and Experiential Psychotherapies, 12, 14-30. DOI:10.1080/14779757.2013.767750
Abstract: Anxiety
difficulties are an increasingly important focus for person-centered-experiential
(PCE) psychotherapies. I begin by
reviewing person-centered, focusing-oriented, and emotion-focused therapy (EFT)
theories of anxiety. Next, I summarize a meta-analysis of 19 outcome studies of PCE
therapies for adults with anxiety, most commonly supportive or person-centered
therapies (PCT) carried out by cognitive behavior therapy (CBT)
researchers. The results indicate large
pre-post change but a clear inferiority to CBT.
I then summarize promising early results from an ongoing study of PCT
and EFT for social anxiety, which show large amounts of pre-post change for
both forms of PCE therapy but substantially more change for clients in the EFT
condition. I conclude with a discussion
of the implications for PCE therapy practice, including the value of process
differentiation and the possibility of developing more effective PCE approaches
for anxiety.
