The purpose of this paper is to examine the psychotherapeutic intervention of Single Session Therapy (SST). The presented review explores SST across a wide variety of therapeutic settings and models in an effort to determine the general effectiveness with which SST has been implemented. The paper beings with a brief definition of the SST as a therapeutic mode.
The Nature of Single Session Therapy
Any instance in which a therapist and patient meet for one and only one session with the objective of dealing with the patient's psychological difficulties can be defined as single session therapy (Talmon, 1990). Such instances, according to Talmon (1990), can occur in one of three ways:
(1) Prior to the session, both the patient and the therapist have agreed that the interaction will last only one session;
(2) Although the therapist plans for the patient to receive a longer period of therapy, the patient elects to terminate after one session; and
(3) Although the patient may feel that he or she needs more than one session, the therapist terminates therapy after the initial meeting; there can be many reasons for such a limitation but Talmon (1990) states that the two most frequent reasons are that the therapist does not feel that the presenting problem is psychopathological or he/she believes that no headway can be made with the patient at this particular point in time.
Regarding the fact that Single Session Therapy often occurs not by design or by the mutual consent of therapist and patient but rather due to a simple refusal of one member of the therapeutic dyad to continue, Spoerl (1985) reported that it may behoove therapists to consider utilizing the initial session for more than the standard interview about the patient's background characteristics and nature of the presenting problem.
In this regard, Spoerl reports that a therapeutic impact is possible and a sufficient closure can be reached during a s...