Research on Adolescent Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Process: An Italian Contribution to the Adolescent Psychotherapy Q-Set (APQ)

ABSTRACT This article aims to increase our understanding of how adolescence psychodynamic therapists view an ideally conducted psychotherapy session from their theoretical point of view. 82 therapists from different psychodynamic approaches provided ratings of the 100 APQ items to describe an ideally conducted psychotherapy process that adheres to the principles of their treatment model. Data analysis included Factor and Q-factor analyses with varimax rotation, spearman correlation, and Chi-Square test. Five main features of therapeutic work with adolescents were found. Common and specific features of different psychodynamic approaches were highlighted. Four empirically derived therapeutic attitudes were also found. From the theoretical perspective of psychodynamic clinicians, APQ can be used to describe therapeutic process with the adolescent patient. It can also highlight the heterogeneity among psychodynamic therapists and reliably gathering therapists into different perspective of psychotherapy process. Future researchers can use these results to explore therapeutic process in actual sessions.