Collaborative Empiricism

Collaborative empiricism (CE), which involves a systematic process of therapist and client working together to establish common goals in treatment, has been found to be one of the primary change agents in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

CBT is used to uncover clients' automatic thoughts and underlying beliefs in treating an array of emotional and behavioral issues.

The role of the therapist or consultant is in developing, promoting, and maintaining therapeutic collaboration and what is constituted by the empirical process.

Client and therapist actively collaborate to identify problem situations, and to design, implement, and evaluate empirical tests of the client’s beliefs.

A key objective is for CE to enable experimentation of beliefs and behaviors outside therapy via the vehicle of homework assignments.