Motivational Interviewing as a Framework for Common Factors Approach in Psychotherapy

Along with reaching saturation in the field of psychotherapy modalities which currently includes more than 400 models that are proven to be effective, common factors approach has started to become one of the hot topics of the psychotherapy debate in the last ten years. While there is a growing literature taking a common factors proponent stance, there are also criticisms including the common factors approach being speculative and not having a scientific ground. In this conceptual paper, first we will outline the common factors approach and motivational interviewing framework. Then, we will discuss the overlapping between common factors perspective and motivational interviewing framework and propose motivational interviewing as an evidence-based research tool and empirically based theoretical framework for the common factors research and theory. Finally, we will discuss the implications and limitations of taking such a stance