BST - Theoretical and pragmatic aspects

Last update By C. Moretto Tuesday Mar 10 2009 02:02

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - 1558

The research methodology for the construction of protocols of intervention developed at the Strategic Therapy Center of Arezzo is the same used by advanced sciences (Popper, 1972), like Physics or Biology in order to create evolved management systems of the studied realities.

The research method has 3 phases:

1. study the specific characteristics of a problem or a class of problems.
2. detect the attempted solutions that have been generally used to solve this class of problems.
3. change these “attempted solutions”, which instead of solving the problem fuel it, with other solutions that are able to produce the desired effects (Watzlawick, Nardone, 1997).

An empirical experimental research methodology is used to construct specific intervention protocols for a  class of problem.

When a protocol for intervention has been developed, the successive phase is a thorough verification of its efficacy and efficiency. The protocol will be applied to at least 100 cases that present the same pathology. If the efficacy is superior to 70%, the protocol is then declared valid in term of therapeutic efficacy. The newly created protocol must also demonstrate its stability over time. In this respect, follow-up sessions are performed at 3 months, 6 months, and one year from the end of the therapy in order to monitor the intervention efficacy and the stability over time of the realized results.

Therapy and application of the intervention protocols.

The choice and the application of various intervention protocols is based on the type of problem presented and always adapted to the uniqueness of each individual and to the uniqueness of each therapy itself. A protocol is not a sequence of rigid moves, but is rather open to various operative possibilities in function of the patients’ responses to the therapists’ moves. This makes the application of each protocol to each single case something unique and not repeatable, even if the protocol guidelines remain unchanged.