An investigation into whether insight acquired in psychotherapy is associated with treatment outcome

• Main Author: Paserpskyte, Jurga
• Other Authors: Hardy, Gillian ; Town, Joel
• Published: University of Sheffield 2012
• Subjects: 155
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.561054

Literature review: The importance of the role of insight in achieving desirable psychotherapeutic change has been emphasised across theoretical schools of psychotherapy. The aim of this literature review was to explore empirical findings of the effects of insight acquired during the course of psychotherapy on treatment outcome. A systematic review found 20 eligible studies. The findings showed a considerable variation in research designs and methodological approaches used; a lack of a consistent definition of insight across empirical studies; and a large disparity in approaches employed to measure insight. The findings provided only tentative evidence for the theoretical proposition that acquisition of insight during the process of psychotherapy is implicated in treatment outcome. Research report: An empirical study aimed to investigate the role of insight as a putative mediator between affect experiencing and treatment outcome using a single case series design. It examined a relationship between an increase in affect and an increase in insight over the course of psychotherapy. Session-by-session insight scores were obtained by coding the video-recordings of the sessions of four participants who underwent 20 sessions of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). The data archive from a prior study was used to obtain emotional experiencing and outcome scores. The findings do not support the role of insight as a mediator between affect experiencing and treatment outcome. The participants did not show greater levels of insight following the segments of therapy where there were higher degrees of affect experiencing. However, within the limitation of the present study, insight and affect experiencing emerged as possible independent predictors of self-reported treatment outcome.