Date of Award

8-1-2002

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling Psychology & Community Services

Abstract

Psychotherapy integration has been consistently found to be the modal or bimodal primary theoretical orientation explicitly reported by psychologists. Considering influences on the field of psychology, psychotherapy integration will likely remain a significant approach to psychotherapy for the foreseeable future. However, not much is known about the clinical application of psychotherapy integration. It is questionable whether current classifications of psychotherapy integration, including theoretical integration, eclecticism, and common factors, can adequately describe clinical approaches. The assessment of latent theoretical orientation, as a means of assessing primary theoretical orientation, is a promising way to examine the clinical use of psychotherapy integration. My primary purpose in this study was to examine any differences in latent theoretical orientation between psychologists who report practicing psychotherapy integration versus those who report practicing a single school therapy and to determine whether or not approaches to psychotherapy integration could be classified into distinct categories using latent theoretical orientation.

A total of 800 practicing psychologists, who are doctoral level members of The National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology, were mailed the Professional Issues in Applied Psychology Survey. The Professional Issues in Applied Psychology Survey is composed of three sections. The first section requests demographic information. The second section consists of questions related to the clinical use of psychotherapy theories and technique. The third section consists of the Counsellor Theoretical Position Scale (CTPS) (Poznanski & McLennan, 1998). The CTPS is a 40-item instrument designed by Poznanski and McLennan (1998, 1999) to measure two dimensions of latent theoretical orientation: Rational-Intuitive and Objective-Subjective.

Consistent with past research, psychologists endorsed psychotherapy integration and psychodynamic approaches as the two most prominent primary theoretical orientations. Based on the results of a discriminant analysis using the two dimensions of latent theoretical orientation as dependent variables, distinctions can best be identified between psychologists endorsing behavioral, cognitive, cognitive-behavioral, or systems approaches from psychologists endorsing psychodynamic, humanistic/existential, or interpersonal approaches. Within approaches to psychotherapy integration between four and five clusters were formed using hierarchical cluster analyses based on the two dimensions of latent theoretical orientation. Implications of these results are discussed.

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