Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy

Domain

Science & Scholarship

Promoting and disseminating research on psychotherapy. Building bridges between psychotherapy research and psychotherapy practice.

Mission

The Science and Scholarship domain oversees two psychotherapy research grant programs for Society members 

  1. The Charles J. Gelso, Ph.D., Psychotherapy Research Grant awards a $5,000 grant to graduate students, predoctoral interns, postdoctoral fellows, and psychologists for research on the psychotherapy process and/or psychotherapy outcomes.
  2. The Norine Johnson, Ph.D., Psychotherapy Research Grant program awards one $20,000 grant to an early career doctoral-level researcher (within 10 years of receiving doctoral degree) for research on psychotherapist factors that may impact treatment effectiveness and outcomes (e.g., type and amount of training, professional degree or discipline, psychotherapists’ personal characteristics).

Members interested in becoming more involved with the Science and Scholarship domain are invited to submit brief summaries of current research projects to the Psychotherapy Bulletin. The domain also encourages members to join the Research Committee, which is responsible for selecting grant awardees amongst other initiatives.

Domain Representative

This section highlights the dedicated professionals who oversee and contribute to each specialized domain within the field of psychotherapy, ensuring continued growth, development, and innovation across various areas of practice.

Jamie Bedics, Ph.D.

Science and Scholarship Domain Representative to the Board of Directors

Dr. Bedics earned his BA in Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University, his MS in Clinical Psychology from the University of Utah, and his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology in Pasadena, CA.  He completed his clinical internship at the Portland VA Medical Center and a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Evidence-Based Treatment Center of Seattle, where he specialized in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).  Dr. Bedics is a Professor at California Lutheran University (CLU) in Thousand Oaks, California and serves as the Director of the MS in Clinical Psychology Program. He teaches courses in Behavioral Clinical Methods, DBT Basics, Suicide Assessment and Risk Management, Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualization using R, and Mindfulness. He also directs the DBT Training Specialization in CLU’s doctoral program. Dr. Bedics is a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of California and is board certified in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). Dr. Bedics’ clinical and research expertise centers on DBT and the treatment of suicidal behavior. He had the unique privilege of working closely with the developer of DBT, Dr. Marsha Linehan, as both a clinician and researcher.  In collaboration with Dr. Linehan, he published research on the therapeutic relationship during DBT and examined how the interpersonal relationship between the therapist and client can impact outcome.  He continued this line of work at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he served as a therapist and researcher on the largest randomized controlled trial of DBT for self- harming and suicidal adolescents (Collaborative Adolescent Research on Emotions and Suicide; CARES). Dr. Bedics is the editor of the Handbook of Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Theory, Research, and Evaluation, published by Academic Press. As the Science and Scholarship Domain Representative on the Division 29 Board of Directors, Dr. Bedics advocates for open science practices that strengthen the reproducibility, integrity, and clinical relevance of psychotherapy research.

Please feel free to contact Dr. Bedics with any questions at jbedics@callutheran.edu

Explore the Depths of Science and Scholarship in Psychotherapy

Bridging Practice & Research
Using Microprocess Methods to Study Client and Therapist Perceptions of Working Alliance Ruptures and Repairs
Psychotherapy Process
Predicting Trainee Therapists’ Abilities with Letters of Recommendation Part 2
Psychotherapy Process
Predicting Trainee Therapists’ Abilities with Letters of Recommendation Part 1
Reflections on the Plague Year
An Exploration of Mechanisms of Change in Functional Analytic Psychotherapy

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Using Microprocess Methods to Study Client and Therapist Perceptions of Working Alliance Ruptures and Repairs
Bridging Practice & Research+2 more

Using Microprocess Methods to Study Client and Therapist Perceptions of Working Alliance Ruptures and Repairs

Decades of research show that the working alliance, or the degree of agreement between a client and therapist on the goals and tasks of therapy and the quality of their affective bond (Bordin, 1979), is positively associated with clinical outcomes (Fluckiger et al., 2018). However, there are sometimes ruptures in the working alliance, or instances […]

Wilson T. Trusty, Ph.D

Wilson T. Trusty, Ph.D

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Predicting Trainee Therapists’ Abilities with Letters of Recommendation Part 2
Psychotherapy Process+1 more

Predicting Trainee Therapists’ Abilities with Letters of Recommendation Part 2

In the last issue of the Bulletin, we began exploring the very timely issue of the use of letters of recommendation (LORs) by clinical and counseling graduate programs as a tool to select students with high potential to be effective therapists. Not only do programs use LORs routinely for this process, but LORs have received […]

Zachary Hoffman, M.S. + 5 more

Zachary Hoffman, M.S. + 5 more

December 2, 2021

Predicting Trainee Therapists’ Abilities with Letters of Recommendation Part 1
Psychotherapy Process+1 more

Predicting Trainee Therapists’ Abilities with Letters of Recommendation Part 1

According to the American Psychological Association’s 2019 report on Admissions, Applications, and Acceptances, over 40,000 individuals applied to clinical psychology programs in the 2016-2017 academic year, with acceptance rates of 12-30% (Michalski et al., 2019). Due to an increasing interest in clinical and counseling psychology (Norcross & Sayette, 2014) and a limited amount of space […]

Zachary Hoffman, M.S. + 5 more

Zachary Hoffman, M.S. + 5 more

November 15, 2021

Reflections on the Plague Year
Bridging Practice & Research

Reflections on the Plague Year

“I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on my Business and Shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked all my Effects in the World; and the other was the Preservation of my Life in so dismal a Calamity as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole City, […]

Patricia T. Spangler, Ph.D.

Patricia T. Spangler, Ph.D.

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An Exploration of Mechanisms of Change in Functional Analytic Psychotherapy
Bridging Practice & Research+1 more

An Exploration of Mechanisms of Change in Functional Analytic Psychotherapy

Given the unresolved nature of the Dodo Bird Verdict (de Felice et al., 2019), clarification of psychotherapy mechanisms remains important and may indicate which clients will respond to treatment (Goldfried et al., 2014), reduce theory-practice gaps (Dobson & Beshai, 2013), and provide insight into why some individuals in control groups show improvement above and beyond […]

Daniel W. M. Maitland, Ph.D.

Daniel W. M. Maitland, Ph.D.

March 1, 2021

Trainee Therapist Characteristics in the Prediction of Client Rated Alliance
Bridging Practice & Research+1 more

Trainee Therapist Characteristics in the Prediction of Client Rated Alliance

Ample research suggests that therapists differ in their level of effectiveness (Blow et. al., 2007; Wampold, 2001). Even more striking is that therapist effects appear to be larger than treatment effects (e.g., Lindgren et al., 2010). These findings suggest that “who” the therapist is may be more important than the type of treatment used. Moreover, […]

Jenelle Slavin-Mulford, Ph.D.

Jenelle Slavin-Mulford, Ph.D.

March 8, 2020

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