Empatia e aliança terapêutica sob a ótica dos terapeutas cognitivo-comportamentais

Abstract

In Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, empathy is considered an important social skill for a good therapeutic relationship formation. Considering the empathy and aliance between therapist and client importance to the psycotherapeutic treatment progress, this study investigated the cognitive-behavioral therapists personal empathic capacity through the Empathy Inventory (IE) and the quality of the therapeutic relationship throug the Cognitive-Behavioral Inventory for Therapeutic Alliance Assessment, in addition the study identify the therapeutic empathy definition from these psychologists. A sample of 30 psychotherapists specialize in Cognitive- Behavioral Therapy answered two inventories. Furthermore, was performed a judges proff for the Cognitive-Behavioral Inventory for Therapeutic Alliance Assessment, developed in this paper based on J. Beck theoretical assumptions. This proff was performed with eight judges, psychologists also specialize in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. The findings showed that participants presented themselves as empathetic person, particularly in Affective Sensitivity and Perspective Taking IE factors. Regarding the therapeutic relationship, psychologists says be appying clinical practices that involves the establishment and maintenance of the alliance, presenting greater difficulty about the therapist s reaction factor in the interaction between client-therapist. The therapeutic empathy definitions given by participants of the sample were more related to the empathy cognitive aspect, especially envolving the taking the other s perspective. The Cognitive-Behavioral Inventory for Terapeutic Alliance Assessment showed satisfactory levels for reliability estimatives (Cronbach s alpha - a = 0,853). Overall, this findings contributes to the understand the variables empathy and therapeutic relationship from the cognitive-behavioral therapist s standpoint, in addition to providing an instrument that allows the evaluation of the therapeutic relationship in this approach.