1. If you saw a psychotherapist, you’d probably measure your improvement by describing changes in your behaviors, thoughts, or feelings. However, those ways of assessing improvement can be difficult to quantify and vulnerable to subjectivity. Would measuring changes in your brain be better? There are plenty of research studies that show how psychotherapy changes the brain, but in the “real world”

of outpatient psychotherapy—counseling centers, clinics, private practice offices—measuring progress with brain imaging technology is still rare (Etkin et al., 2005; Barsaglini et al., 2014; Weingarten &

Strauman, 2015). As the years go by, however, it may become more common, especially if scanning equipment becomes more convenient and less expensive. If you were the client, how would you want your therapy progress to be measured—by changes that a scanner notices in your brain, or by changes that you notice in your day-to-day life? What are the pros and cons of each?