Due to copyright issues, an electronic copy of the thesis must be ordered from the faculty. For the faculty to have time to process the order, the order must be received by the faculty at the latest 2 days before the public defence. Orders received later than 2 days before the defence will not be processed. After the public defence, please address any inquiries regarding the thesis to the candidate.
Trial Lecture – time and place
See Trial Lecture.
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Assistant Professor Melissa De Smet, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
- Second opponent: Clinical Psychologist, PhD Jan Reidar Stiegler, Institutt for psykologisk rådgivning
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Associate Professor Mari Nerhus, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Professor Emeritus Stein E. Opjordsmoen Ilner, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Chief Physician Julie Horgen Evensen, Oslo University Hospital
Summary
The thesis examines how depressed patients experience improvement in psychotherapy and which metaphors they use to express and make sense of their experiences. The thesis is part of a larger study called “Mechanisms of Change in Psychotherapy” (MOP) where the goal is to examine what works for whom and why in psychotherapy. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed by using thematic analysis and metaphor-led discourse analysis.
Patients report that therapy has improved their self-esteem, aided their self-acceptance, made them more open to others, taught them how to set inter-personal boundaries and to take more responsibility for their own lives. Improvement is experienced as a result of many factors in combination, occurring both inside and outside the therapy room.
After three years, several patients report that they still experience improvement from therapy, and some find that therapy has helped them more than they initially thought.
Most patients used their own unique metaphors to describe their expectations of therapy, the therapy itself, and the experience of improvement. Most important, patients used different metaphors to describe what they wanted to get out of therapy. Some said they needed "tools" to rebuild themselves, while others preferred to "dig into the depths" of their own minds to find the "root of the problems." Interviews with therapists revealed conflicting feelings towards some of the patient metaphors. While the cognitive therapists are critical towards the metaphor of digging into the depths, the psychodynamic therapists are more critical towards metaphors of tools.
In sum, this thesis shows the importance of the patient perspective in the continued improvement of psychotherapy. It also provides a strong reason as to why we should pay closer attention to metaphors both in therapy sessions and in psychotherapy research.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.