Evaluation of Results of Psychotherapy

volved in assessing the benefit patients derive from psychotherapy. "Improvement " is diffi-cult to define, since it is only meaningful when the patient's diagnosis, age, pretreat-ment strengths, social situation, and other fac-tors are considered. Patients often improve in one area of personality function hut remain unchanged in others. Scales of adjustment have been used to determine the extent of improvement with therapy but a large num-ber of scales is necessary to cover all the components of the patient's personality. The quantitative measurements obtained by means of these scales are usually quite rough. Con-sequently there are limits to the types of sta-tistical maneuvers that can be applied to the data and these results have to be interpreted cautiously. An objective evaluation of the patient's improvement may be difficult to ob-tain. Biases can easily develop, and depend upon the person making the evaluation. The acceptance, or lack of acceptance, of the psy-chotherapeutic method by the evaluator would be particularly important. Attempts are being made to further under-stand the many factors involved in the proc-ess of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a com-plex procedure and it is difficult to devis