Open AccessHow Do We Decide Which of Two Case Formulations Is Correct? Commentary on Westerman and Critchfield et al.
Author(s) -
Stanley B. Messer
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
pragmatic case studies in psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1553-0124
DOI - 10.14713/pcsp.v17i1.2090
Subject(s) - psychology , psychological intervention , value (mathematics) , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , function (biology) , epistemology , psychotherapist , cognitive psychology , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , psychiatry , statistics , machine learning , evolutionary biology , biology
This commentary takes a meta-view of the articles in this module by Westerman (2021a), and by Critchfield, Dobner-Pereira and Stucker (2021a), which offer two overlapping but also different formulations of the same case. It raises the question of whether there is only one true formulation of a clinical case (correspondence theory), or whether any one of several would qualify as accurate (coherence theory). A third alternative is that the truth-value of a formulation is a function of its ability to predict which therapist interventions will most help the client (pragmatic theory). A study is described in which the relative accuracy of two different formulations of the same case was put to the test in predicting which therapist interventions led to client progress. I propose that the current authors compare the pragmatic value of their formulations in a similar manner.