Common Factors Therapy

This book highlights common factors as a psychotherapeutic treatment and offers related techniques that can be used as rubrics to improve clinical practice and training.

The authors discuss five key common factors: the therapeutic relationship, motivation, corrective experiencing, insight, and self‑efficacy, which serve as heuristics for therapists of any background.

Each factor is broken down into a set of core principles, intervention concepts, and example techniques, such as motivational interviewing skills, confronting distress to move towards change, adopting a multicultural orientation, and empowering clients.

Deliberate practice methods are provided so that clinicians can rehearse common factor approaches and integrate them into their own work.

Reviewing past efforts to define actionable common factors—including the contextual model of therapy—as well as transtheoretical studies and techniques, the book provides a uniquely well‑defined common factors model of treatment and paves the way for future innovations.

Preface

Introduction: A Common Factors Approach to Therapy

• Chapter 1. Common Factors: Hypothesis to Metatheory to Theoretical Orientation
• Chapter 2. The Therapeutic Relationship, Common Factor 1
• Chapter 3. Motivation, Common Factor 2
• Chapter 4. Corrective Experiencing, Common Factor 3
• Chapter 5. Insight, Common Factor 4
• Chapter 6. Self-Efficacy, Common Factor 5

Epilogue: The Future of Common Factors Therapy

References

About the Authors

Index

Russell J. Bailey, PhD, is an associate professor at Utah Valley University’s Behavioral Science department with a training program for clinical mental health counselors. His research interests include therapy itself, what makes it effective, and what can make it more effective.

Dr. Bailey completed a PhD in clinical psychology at Brigham Young University in 2010 and has previously worked in private practice, veterans affairs, juvenile justice, and university counseling center settings, including as tenured university clinical faculty. He is a deliberate practice certified therapist.

Benjamin M. Ogles, PhD, is a professor in psychology at Brigham Young University, his alma mater. Previously, he was a professor and academic administrator at Ohio University for 21 years. His main interest is psychotherapy process and outcome research with specific focus on assessing outcome, common factors, and psychotherapy training.

Articles coauthored by Dr. Ogles have appeared in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy Research, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Clinical Psychology Review, and Psychotherapy among others.

He was the lead author of the book Essentials of Outcome Assessment written with Michael J. Lambert and Scott Fields.

The book addresses a topic that is well-established and important for psychology—common factors—but has suffered from having too little guidance regarding practical applications. Over the years I’ve heard many colleagues speak their concerns to the effect of “I understand and agree with common factors theory, but how do I apply it?” Something I really like about this book is how well it balances theory and practical applications. Too many books in psychology overemphasize theory and leave readers without guidance on practical applications. This has been needed for a few decades now!
—Tony Rousmaniere, PhD, Cofounder and Program Director, Sentio University, Los Angeles, CA, United States

This is the right book at the right time. The field of psychotherapy is starting to transition from the question of who is right to what is right. This volume provides a description and illustration of those transtheoretical principles that comprise the foundation of all schools of therapy. The implications for research, practice, and training are indeed exciting, and this volume should be required reading for experienced and beginning professionals alike.
—Marvin R. Goldfried, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Psychology Department, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States

In this book, Russ Bailey and Benjamin Ogles describe a common factors approach to psychotherapy based on five principles of change—the therapeutic relationship, motivation, corrective experiencing, insight, and self-efficacy. Most important, this book moves beyond a simple description of common factors theory to detail a comprehensive approach that can be used by common factors therapists. The authors’ guidance will be helpful for therapists, trainees, and researchers. As I read it, I found myself wishing that I would have had access to this book early in my training and career.
—Joshua K. Swift, PhD, Department of Psychology, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, United States

The book is a rediscovery of psychotherapy principles on the basis of common factors: a fresh, open-minded, and systematic introduction to the world of psychotherapy. It is an invaluable resource for psychotherapists who do not want to confine their professional identity to a single school but who wish to capitalize on the essence of what works in psychotherapy. Like a Swiss Army knife, the book represents a versatile tool for the everyday work of a psychotherapy practitioner.
—Tomáš Rihácek, PhD, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

As trainees and experienced clinicians feel increased pressures to integrate a wide range of evidence-based practices, this much-needed book offers a model of therapy based on principles of change that cut across different theoretical orientations and provides detailed guidelines, methods, and examples for implementing them flexibly and effectively. Bailey and Ogles have opened a new and promising avenue to learn and improve how to conduct psychotherapy.
—Louis G. Castonguay, PhD, Liberal Arts Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Penn State University, University Park, PA, United States; former president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research