Note on optimization of individual psychotherapeutic processes

Individual psychotherapy typically involves a sequence of recurrent sessions of client-therapist interaction. Accordingly, the psychotherapeutic process can be conceived of as evolving at least at two different time scales: a fast time scale pertaining to the on-going interaction within each session and a slow time scale associated with sequential regularities occurring between consecutive sessions. It is possible to exploit the sequential regularities between sessions in order to assess and optimize an ongoing individual psychotherapeutic process in real time. In this note a computational paradigm is outlined according to which this can be implemented and applied in flexible ways. Illustrations are given with simulated data. A heuristic summary is provided in the closing section.