Abstract

PINTO-GOUVEIA, José  and  RIJO, Daniel. Schema focused therapy: Some questions about its empirical validation. Psicologia [online]. 2001, vol.15, n.2, pp.309-324. ISSN 0874-2049.

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.

Keywords : Terapia focada nos esquemas; distúrbios da personalidade; esquemas precoces mal-adaptativos.

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