Most therapists believe they work with feelings and with patterns from the past. Researchers decided to check. They listened to recordings of real therapy sessions and compared what therapists actually did. Psychodynamic therapists stood out. They did seven things more fully and more consistently than therapists trained in other approaches. Those seven things are what I do every day in…
When people think about what makes therapy effective, they often think first about techniques. The specific tools a therapist uses, the framework they work within, the exercises or approaches they bring to a session. It is a reasonable starting point. But decades of psychotherapy research have arrived at a more nuanced and, in some ways, more interesting answer. What most…