“The Deliberate Practice Society is committed to

improving client outcomes and professional growth, through reliably effective procedures for the development of expertise in the field of psychotherapy. The broader goal is developing a clinical culture characterized by ongoing skill building and focused on therapist’s performance. This mission statement describes necessary steps to enable better outcomes for patients, development of psychotherapists, and evolution for the field of psychotherapy.

The Deliberate Practice Society is dedicated to the following:

Developing the therapist

The DP Society is focused on therapist development, not specific models, techniques or client presentations. We encourage the ongoing practice of universally important clinical skills (e.g. alliance-focused skills, facilitative interpersonal skills, managing therapist’s inner experience). The DP Society also encourages the practice of specific skills from specific models, as models serve an important role in therapy, and can aid in therapist development of universal clinical skills.  We stress the importance of not idealizing or devaluating a specific therapy model, while at the same time respecting the trainee’s enthusiasm and commitment to such models.

Cultivating a diverse, world-wide community of DP therapists and DP coaches

The DP Society promotes a culture of peers, and guards against gurufication of any individuals. A fundamental focus is to maintain a healthy, non-competitive, non-authority-based community of practice.

No one is master, all are students - forever. The DPI is committed to cultivating a safe and challenging global learning environment in the field of psychotherapy. We promote a culture of openness (everybody being willing to show work to everybody), hard work (encourages training at a challenging level of difficulty, a high proportion of solitary practice in training), and failure-facing (viewing mistakes as necessary steps towards improvement). The community maintains a culture for creating and disseminating free resources for practice (videos prompts, webinars, interviews, etc).

“no one is master, all are students - forever.”

Fostering self-compassion

The DP Society focuses on explicitly addressing and enhancing the trainee´s and coach´s self-compassion and compassion for others in doing the hard and vulnerable work of effective, ongoing deliberate practice. This implies attending to and working with coach’s and trainee’s inevitable complex inner reactions connected with effective practice, most notably shame and self-criticism.

Protecting the trainee´s welfare

The DP Society encourages practice that is tailored to the trainees’ current personal capacity. The means to this end is a continuous assessment and adjustment of Deliberate Practice to fit the trainee, optimizing the intensity of training while, importantly, preventing overload. This is not only a fundamental tenet of DP, it is also a fundamentally unshaming and compassionate stance towards personal and professional development.

Promoting innovation in training methods

The DP Society promotes flexible adherence to DP methods, and encourages research projects for continuing enhancement of psychotherapy DP procedures. A goal is to bring structure to DP so that it can be implemented sustainably for clinicians and is comprehensive enough to lead to improved outcomes for clients.

Ensuring quality of DP

The DP Society promotes high standards for DP and coaching, and focuses on quality control of effective DP methods through our certifications.

Emphasizing clients´ responses and feedback

Identifying non-responding clients is at the core of the development of psychotherapy. This identification is not covered by the therapist´s adherence to a treatment model, knowledge of theory, or length of experience. The DP Society promotes the clinician´s honest and open interest for client feedback, to detect non-response or negative response to therapy. Clients’ feedback is viewed as helpful in maintaining effectiveness of the treatment.

Concluding remark

It is the hope of the Deliberate Practice Society to lift the effectiveness of psychotherapy by supporting professionals to do the humbling and difficult work of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice has the ability to not only improve the lives of individuals seeking therapy but also to create a community of like-minded professionals seeking to enhance their work. This mission statement describes a framework on which to evolve the field of psychotherapy.“

The DP Society Governance Committee

Alexandre Vaz (alexmagvaz@gmail.com)

Elisabet Rosén (er@danspsykologi.se)

Nathan Castle (nathan@psychologyoutcomes.com)

Vidar Husby (vidar@favne.no)

Tony Rousmaniere (trousmaniere@gmail.com)

Approved at the 2020.06.29 DPS Governance Meeting

Click here to download a copy of the DPS Mission Statement