Role of action-oriented inter actions in different therapies -: Process control and relevance of success

Motivational and volitional competencies of action oriented self regulation (sensu Kuhl) are assumed to promote desired psychotherapeutic changes and outcomes. Findings of Hartung und Schulte (1991) supported this for agoraphobic patients treated with cognitively prepared exposure. The predictive power of increasing action orientation was particularly strong, if a coding system was used categorizing patient's and therapist's verbal expressions regarding their actualized attentional focus. We intended to study the generalizability of these findings to different diagnoses and treatments. Hartung's coding system was applied to selected session segments of three groups: obesity patients/self-management interventions, university clinic outpatients/Brief Therapy, and severely depressed inpatients/cognitive behavior therapy. Action orientation increased in the course of all treatments. Therapists and patients responded to the attentional focus actualized in the preceeding expression of their partner. Time and intensity of these changes and their correlation with outcome criteria varied between the groups and supported the validity and relevance of these analyses.