BIG IDEAS FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING

Research indicates that traditional psychotherapy training practices are ineffective in durably improving the effectiveness of psychotherapists. In addition, the quantity and quality of psychotherapy training research has also been limited in several ways. Thus, based on extant scholarship and personal experience, we offer several suggestions for improving on this state of affairs. Specifically, we propose that future psychotherapy trainings focus on a few "big ideas," target psychotherapist meta-cognitive skills, and attend more closely to the organizational/treatment context in which the training takes place. In terms of future training research, we recommend that researchers include a wider range of intermediate outcomes in their studies, examine the nature of trainee skill development, and investigate the role that organizational/treatment culture plays in terms of the retention of changes elicited by psychotherapy training.