Robert Elliott

I trained in the US as a Clinical Psychologist and am licensed as a Psychologist in the State of Ohio.  I have expertise in Person-Centred-Experiential psychotherapy and counselling in general and specifically in Emotion-Focused Therapy, of which I am one of the originators.  I am a psychotherapy research methodologist with experience in a wide variety of research methods.  I received my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA in 1978. I taught at the University of Toledo 1978-2006, where I am now Professor Emeritus of Psychology. I have also held visiting faculty positions as Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), York University (Canada), University of Sheffield (UK), and La Trobe University (Australia). I served as President of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (2000-2001) and as co-editor of the journal Psychotherapy Research (1994-1998). I co-authored Facilitating emotional change (1993, with Leslie Greenberg and Laura Rice), Learning process-experiential psychotherapy (2004, with Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, and Leslie Greenberg), and Research methods in clinical psychology (3rd ed., with Chris Barker & Nancy Pistrang), as well as more than 150 journal articles or book chapters. I am a Fellow in the Divisions of Psychotherapy, Clinical Psychology, and Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association. In 2008 I received the Carl Rogers Award for Contributions to Humanistic Psychology form the American Psychological Association, as well as the Distinguished Career Award of the Society for Psychotherapy Research. I also served as co-editor of the journal, Person-Centered Counseling and Psychotherapy (2001 – 2005).

• Person-Centred-Experiential psychotherapy and counselling

• Emotion-Focused Therapy

• Research methods in applied psychology

• Psychotherapy research, including process and outcome research

• Single case research

• Measure development

• Meta-analysis and qualitative meta-synthesis

In general, my main research focus is on how clients change in humanistic-experiential psychotherapies, especially Person-Centred and Emotion-Focused therapies for social anxiety.  By necessity, this encompasses studying the outcome of these therapies, as well as clients' experiences of what they found helpful or unhelpful.  I believe that a range of research methods are appropriate for studying change processes, including quantitative and qualitative, group designs and single case studies, measure development research, meta-analyses and meta-syntheses, and even, where appropriate, randomised clinical trials.

More specifically, my current research focuses on the process and outcome of Emotion-Focused Therapy with Social Anxiety.  I am also involved the following:

• Measure development research to support research on humanistic-experiential psychotherapies (eg, individualised outcome assessment; assessment of person-centred-experiential therapist competence)

• Meta-analytic research on the effectiveness of humanistic-experiential psychotherapies across a variety of client populations (eg, depression, anxiety, psychosis)

• Development of a person-centred taxonomy of client presenting problems based on the Personal Questionnaire

• Counselling and psychotherapy research methods (PG Diploma and MSc levels)

• Person-centred/experiential counselling and psychotherapy

• Emotion-Focused Therapy

• Mental health assessment and intervention