Research Interests

• Discontinuous patterns of change in the psychotherapeutic process (sudden gains and sudden losses)

Interestingly, it is often assumed that change in psychotherapy is linear, meaning the patient is getting better steadily with each therapy session. However, as Tang and DeRubeis (1999b) claim, some patients tend to experience sudden, rapid and stable improvements between two consecutive therapy sessions and therefore display non-linear change patterns. Similarly, some patients undergo an abrupt deterioration from one therapy session to the next. These phenomena are called sudden gains and sudden losses. This project aims to investigate whether sudden gains and sudden losses are unique to clinical samples and whether they are related to heightened intra-individual variance. Additionally, this project examines how sudden gains and losses are perceived by those who experience them.

• Patient focused research