Schema focused therapy: some questions about empirical validation

Abstract

Some questions related to the empirical validation of Schema Focused Therapy (SFT) are discussed. SFT was developed by Young (1990) as a way of conceptualizing and treating personality disordered patients. Rather than a completely new approach, SFT is better conceptualized as a development of Beck’s Cognitive Therapy for personality disorders (Beck et al., 1990). SFT postulates that Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS) underlie psychopathology. Therefore, SFT validation may require the clinical/research assessment of these cognitive structures in a valid and reliable way. The present paper aims to discuss the possibility of using different methodologies in assessing such cognitive structures critically analyzing self-report questionnaires in such an assessment, namely Young’s Schema Questionnaire (Young & Brown, 1990). Finally, we present a new method developed by the authors for the assessment of EMS (Rijo & Pinto-Gouveia, 1999), which tries to overcome the limitations of the assessment instruments currently available.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v15i2.502