Functional analytic psychotherapy
Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is a psychotherapeutic approach based on clinical behavior analysis (CBA) that focuses on the therapeutic relationship as a means to maximize client change. Specifically, FAP suggests that in-session contingent responding to client target behaviors leads to significant therapeutic improvements. FAP was first conceptualized in the 1980s by psychologists Robert Kohlenberg and Mavis Tsai who, after noticing a clinically significant association between client outcomes and the quality of the therapeutic relationship, set out to develop a theoretical and psychodynamic model of behavioral psychotherapy based on these concepts. Behavioral principles (e.g., reinforcement, generalization) form the basis of FAP. (See below.) FAP is an idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) approach to psychotherapy. This means that FAP therapists focus on the function of a client's behavior instead of the form. The aim is to change a broad class of behaviors that might look different on the surface but all serve the same function. It is idiographic in that the client and therapist work together to form a unique clinical formulation of the client's therapeutic goals, rather than one therapeutic target for every client who enters therapy. Basics FAP posits that client behaviors that occur in their out-of-session interpersonal relationships (i.e.