Several streams of contemporary psychotherapy adopt what may be termed a "presuppositionalist" attitude in which the therapeutic process and the therapeutic outcome are understood to be intrinsically (dare we say organically) dependent on the philosophical foundations. This characteristic may be observed in therapies that claim to be empirically validated as well as those that base their methodologies on humanistic assumptions, postmodern assumptions, or religious values. Thus raising the question, "To what extent do these attributed philosophical foundations matter?"
One way to consider your question would be to look at the research which suggests outcomes may be broadly equivalent across treatment approaches (often referred to as the Dodo bird effect eg Luborsky et al, 2002 & Rosenzweig, 1936). It has been argued that this reflects common therapy factors and thus there are specific therapy components which matter rather than philosophy / theoretical foundations per se. There are other possibilities however (eg see Davies & Nagi, 2017 - chapter 15) - therapy equivalence may be a failure to detect differences or (and perhaps more interestingly) that different people may gain from different interventions. This latter idea might suggest the need for a therapy, therapist, client 'fit' and possibly for the notion of 'general' and 'specific' responders (some may benefit from any form of therapy whilst others might need a specific approach that they can 'buy in to' and use). It will be interesting to see what others might contribute.
One way to consider your question would be to look at the research which suggests outcomes may be broadly equivalent across treatment approaches (often referred to as the Dodo bird effect eg Luborsky et al, 2002 & Rosenzweig, 1936). It has been argued that this reflects common therapy factors and thus there are specific therapy components which matter rather than philosophy / theoretical foundations per se. There are other possibilities however (eg see Davies & Nagi, 2017 - chapter 15) - therapy equivalence may be a failure to detect differences or (and perhaps more interestingly) that different people may gain from different interventions. This latter idea might suggest the need for a therapy, therapist, client 'fit' and possibly for the notion of 'general' and 'specific' responders (some may benefit from any form of therapy whilst others might need a specific approach that they can 'buy in to' and use). It will be interesting to see what others might contribute.
This strongly depends on the therapist and the client. Both are individuals. To my mind, and there is a fair amount of research to back this up, the relationship between the therapist and the client is the most important fact. With the types of clients with whom we are working, that is, war victims - military and civilian - and asylum seekers, it is extremely important to be highly flexible in adjusting the philosophy and the techniques of therapy to the individual and his/her background and experience as well as to his/her personality and circumstances.
I think presuppositionalist studies whose outcomes are implied in their philosophical assumptions are circular and therefore unsound. The only way to salvage these studies is by (1) proving the philosophical assumptions and (2) statistically factoring out of the data whatever causal determination exists between the assumptions and the results.
I'd say it could matter insofar as therapist and client share the same philosophical values, or at the very least insofar as the client feels the therapist bases his/her practice on philosophical foundations he/she (the client) agrees with (that's pretty close to Jason Davies's answer).
The "supposition of knowledge" is usually what triggers transference, and more generally a form of therapeutic alliance : "my therapist knows a lot more than I do on the matter".
One way to test this could be to correlate the effectiveness of a certain therapy with the client's degree of satisfaction and the extent to which he/she believes the therapist and him/her share the same values.
For example, and since you're working on the interfaces between the counseling disciplines and a Christian worldview, it'd be very interesting to know whether a Christian patient would be more satisfied with a psychodynamic psychotherapy or a form of religious counselling and why - especially since a part of the reason why therapies are effective lies in the degree to which both patient and therapist believe in their effectiveness.
Exciting question you're asking. Hope that helped.
Regarding all kinds of boundary violations in psychotherapy it is well necessary to consider the philosophical foundations of treatment in order to develop - with every client - a therapeutic attitude of respect, empathy and flexible abstinence. www.ethikverein.de
Great question Kelvin and some great responses. Here are a couple of considerations to hopefully add and/or expand on what you have already been sent. The short answer to your question is probably, 'yes'! George Lakoff makes this point really well in his book 'Don't think of an elephant'. This said though, I am not always sure that the philosophical principles that a therapy claims, are those which it practices. I am less sure that those which therapist's claim are those which they practice. This is not to say that therapies and therapists are being intentionally misleading, generally we are an extremely well intentioned group, rather that sometimes we are not always aware that our practices and our principles do not necessarily match. Daniel Kahnemann makes this point more widely in 'Thinking fast and slow' and more widely again his work on bias generally. Petruska Clarkson makes this point indirectly in her explanation of transference in 'On Psychotherapy 2'. In any field of therapy there seems to be an ongoing, and very healthy, debate about what, 'precisely' the theoretical foundations of therapy actually are. This seems especially true in my own field of person centred therapy with regard to congruence and unconditional positive regard for example. There is also growing concern in the field of therapy research about the effect of researcher allegiance, in predicting results in comparing the effectiveness of different therapies, Mick Cooper makes some interesting, if not scary points about this in 'The facts are friendly. While perhaps not directly related with your question, these are all points I would want to consider if I were trying to answer it. Good luck with it all. Bill
Have not familiarized myself with this research in quite some time but here is a link to a researcher that I am aware of that looks at pan-theoretical factors influencing psychotherapy outcomes. If I am remembering correctly the strongest predictor of outcome is the quality of the therapeutic alliance between the therapist and client.
https://www.umass.edu/pbs/people/michael-constantino
My theory in this case was theoretically based on V.E. Frankl's existential analysis/logotherapy. The visualized therapy is illustrated in the paper:
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