The acquisition of psychotherapeutic skill: an empirical study

The acquisition of psychotherapy skillfulness is an important aspect of training programs in psychiatry and clinical psychology. Psychotherapy supervision is employed to teach and monitor the development of these clinical skills. The Supervisor Report (SR) is a questionnaire designed to systematically assess therapeutic behaviors and global psychotherapeutic skillfulness of therapists conducting psychodynamic psychotherapy. SRs were employed to examine changes in trainees' skillfulness over the course of training. T-tests were applied to evaluate differences between the average scores of trainees in the first half of their training compared to the last half of their training. Comparisons of the scores for Psychotherapeutic Techniques and assessments of Global Skillfulness were in the predicted direction: Trainees in the advanced portion of their training were rated as more skillful than at the beginning. This study provides some evidence that psychotherapy skillfulness is acquired over time in training.