TITLE:
Differential Therapeutic Responses to DBT Skills Training and Validation: A Case Study
AUTHORS:
Graham S. Danzer, Simon Ferber
KEYWORDS:
Cultural Issues, Gender Issues—Female, Trauma, Victim, Intimate Partner Violence, Treatment, Hispanic/Latino—Race
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.5 No.7,
May
22,
2014
ABSTRACT: There is
some debate in clinical circles about whether therapy should be oriented more
to the client’s subjective emotional needs or to the client’s need for
therapeutic direction and problem solving. Although not a true dichotomy,
clinicians often orient more strongly to one of the aforementioned strategies or the other. Dialectical behavior
therapy (DBT) offers a framework to practice both strategies, as it emphasizes
both validation and skills training. It is hypothesized that either the
validation, as an example of meeting client’s subjective emotional needs, or
the skills training accounts for more of the therapeutic change in individuals
with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This hypothesis is explored through
the case of Teresa, a borderline client who received therapy that aligned with
the principles of DBT. She seemed to respond most favorably to basic empathic
connection and a subjective sense of being understood. Contrastingly, she
tended to recoil from skills-focused interventions. Based on these results,
limitations and implications for future research are proposed.