The Functional Analytic Psychotherapy Rating Scale (FAPRS): a Behavioral Psychotherapy Coding System (Report‪)‬

Psychotherapy is a set of circumstances that can produce meaningful, lasting and positive behavior change. It is unclear, however, which aspects of many treatments actually cause change. Most therapies assume that the manipulation of certain critical variables in psychotherapy, called mechanisms of change, will reduce client problem behaviors and increase adaptive behaviors. Although mechanisms of change are assumed to operate in the day-to-day practice of psychotherapy, they are rarely studied empirically, and are often left either unspecified or defined in a way that makes detection and measurement of their operation difficult. The client-therapist relationship is one such potential mechanism of change in need of further specification and study. Psychotherapy has been described as the "systematic use of a human relationship for therapeutic purposes" (Butler and Strupp, 1986, p. 36). Many other therapists and researchers also regard the therapeutic relationship as essential to the process of client change (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979; Fiedler, 1950; Greenberg, 1994; Hentschel & Bijleveld, 1995; Horvath & Luborsky, 1993; Krasner, 1962, 1963; Lazarus, 1972; Morganstern, 1988; Rimm & Masters, 1974; Rogers, 1957; Rosenfarb, 1992; Schaap, Bennun, Schindler, & Hoodguin, 1993; Wright & Davis, 1994). There is an important gap, however, between assumptions about the importance of the therapeutic relationship and empirical documentation of the events that change client behavior.