Therapeutic collaboration and significant events to the client’s change: a systematic review

Abstract

This study presents a systematic review of literature on research focused in significant events in psychotherapy and their relation with collaborative process between therapist and client. Researchers argue that attention to significant events can be effectively an important strategy to improve the understanding of how change process occurs in psychotherapy. Moreover, the therapeutic collaboration as a central dimension of alliance has been consistently associated with therapeutic change. This study aimed to understand how these two research topics have been addressed in conjunction by psychotherapy researchers. Medline and PubMed Resources Guide, Scielo, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, EBSCO and OVID electronic databases were searched between the years 2000 and 2015, with keywords such as therapeutic alliance or collaboration, and significant events, helpful aspects, important moments, or episodes, and process or outcomes, with all possible combinations of derivatives. Regarding the results of this review, we found only four qualitative studies that meet the inclusion criteria. These studies had different aims and used different methodologies to collect and to analyze the significant events. The analysis of these studies suggest a need for further investigations aiming to microanalyse the interactive and relational processes occurring within the significant events in psychotherapy.