Secularising the therapeutic relationship in cognitive behavioural therapy: Shared case formulation
This paper critically reviews scientific literature regarding the concepts of «therapeutic relationship», «therapeutic alliance» and «shared case formulation», linking the first to the relational developments of the cognitive behavioural paradigm, and the second to a trans-theoretical operational concept. This critical examination holds that only the third one is compatible with a consistent and promising development of the cognitive-behavioural psychotherapeutic paradigm, while the first one leads to two incompatible and unpromising outcomes: either an aspecific definition of psychotherapeutic relationship as a decisive aspect present in every therapeutic change, which reduces psychotherapy to a placebo effect and a sterile eclecticism, or to a specific definition which must accept being honestly presented in terms of promise of theoretically founded increased efficacy without surreptitiously using any concepts related to an aspecific definition of therapeutic relationship present in any therapy and capable of making them all homogeneously effective and equivalent.