Outlines of a general theory of the psychotherapy process. The clinical exchange as communicational field: theoretical considerations and methodological implications

Psychotherapy process research nowadays is facing the need to make research evidence from different clinical approaches reciprocally commensurable. This seems possible through the design of general metatheoretical models of the clinical process that can both describe the clinical process and its working and pinpoint the dynamics regulating this process as well as the conditions that favour its functioning. This chapter outlines a semiotic and dynamic perspective in which the clinical process is conceived in terms of communicational dynamic field focusing on the ontological status of psychotherapy and the modelling of its basic modality of functioning. Finally, some methodological implications are outlined in terms of psychotherapy process modelling as a field phenomenon and strategies of knowledge building.