What Does it Mean to be a Common Factors Informed Family Therapist?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12477
• Author: Alexander L. Hsieh,Sean D. Davis
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Published date: 01 September 2019

What Does it Mean to be a Common Factors

Informed Family Therapist?

SEAN D. DAVIS*

ALEXANDER L. HSIEH*

The common factors paradigm in couple and family therapy has gained popularity over

the past several decades, leading many therapists to refer to themselves as common factors

family therapists. Despite this, no consensus exists on what it means to be a common fac-

tors family therapist, or if such a designation even makes sense given that the common fac-

tors paradigm is not a model. Synthesizing the existing common factors literature, a case is

made for the designation “common factors informed family therapist,” and the following

six core principles are outlined that characterize this designation: (1) sees overlap among

theories; (2) passionate about theory, not atheory; (3) client centered; (4) monitors hope and

the therapeutic alliance; (5) views clients as people rather than objects; and (6) prioritizes

healing over therapy. Each of the concepts is discussed in depth, and clinical implications

are provided.

Keywords: Common Factors; Couple and Family Therapy

Fam Proc 58:629–640, 2019

In the past two decades, the common factors approach to couple and family therapy

(CFT)

1

has gone from being a niche outsider perspective to a mainstream paradigm.

Lambert’s (1992) four common factors (later expanded by Hubble, Duncan, & Miller, 1999)

of client and extratherapeutic factors, alliance factors, model or technique factors, and

expectancy factors have become widely familiar. Within family therapy, Sprenkle and

Blow (2004a,b) and Sprenkle, Davis, and Lebow (2009) proposed four common factors

unique to family therapy (described later) that have formed the foundation of a rapidly

expanding literature on common factors in family therapy (Blow, Sprenkle, & Davis, 2007;

D’Aniello & Fife, 2017; Davis & Piercy, 2007b; Fife, Whiting, Bradford, & Davis, 2014;

Fraser, Solovey, Grove, Lee, & Greene, 2011; Sprenkle et al., 2009). The empirical base

for common factors has grown along with the popularity of the approach (Asay & Lambert,

1999; Wampold, 2001), leading many researchers and model developers to expand their

lines of inquiry to include common factors principles (Fraser et al., 2011). Common factors

ideas are being integrated into graduate training curricula, with some programs having

entire courses devoted entirely to the approach (Karam, Blow, Sprenkle, & Davis, 2015).

Both the national and California CFT licensure exams include questions about common

factors.

*Marital and Family Therapy Program, Alliant International University, Sacramento,CA .

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sean D. Davis, Marital and Family Ther-

apy Program, Alliant International University, 2030 West El Camino Avenue, Suite 200, Sacramento, CA

95833. E-mail: sdavis2@alliant.edu.

1

To aid brevity, the term “family therapy” will be used to denote systemic therapy including couple, mar-

riage, and family therapy.

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Family Process, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2019 ©2019 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12477