Therapeutic Alliance in cognitive-constructivist treatment and in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Silvia Riberto, Isabel Fernandez, Fabio Furlani, Marta Vigorelli
Therapeutic alliance is a central theme of contemporary research and assessment in psychotherapy.
Based on an acknowledgement of international literature and on research data, the alliance emerges
as a common therapeutic factor transversal to the different treatment models, which therefore, sets
itself beyond the techniques, but at the same time interlaces with them and with their specifi cities.
The study presented aims to observe the therapeutic alliance between the patient and the therapist by
using Horvath’s (1981;1982) assessment tool within two short psychotherapeutic courses; one course
conducted with a cognitive-constructivist approach, the other with the Eye Movement Desensitization
and Reprocessing (EMDR). The results of the descriptive analysis performed on the data and
the observations which emerged have confi rmed the importance that both approaches attach to
therapeutic alliance on the theoretical and methodological level. In particular, the alliance assessments
provided by the patient and by the therapist in the therapy with Eye Movement Desensitization
and Reprocessing were found to be much more consistent in refl ecting the distinctive emotional
attunement of the approach.
Keywords
Therapeutic alliance, Eye Movement Desensitization, cognitive constructivist
psychotherapy, adaptive information processing, intersubjective negotiation process.
