[Therapeutic goals in psychological medicine--state of research and development of a standardized self-rating instrument].

From the patient's as well as from the therapist's point of view goals of therapy undoubtedly play an important role in all fields of psychological medicine (psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychosomatic medicine). On the other hand, there is a substantial lack of systematic i.e. empirical studies on this issue. Giving an overview on the available scientific literature we start by characterising therapeutic goals as a secondary psychological construction. Therapeutic goals and their multiple associations and different aspects of psychotherapy are discussed. However, a variety of definitions of therapeutic goals, often influenced by the therapeutic orientation of the authors, make it difficult to integrate concepts and to compare findings. Hence, we focus on those results which were found in relation to general concepts, i.e. beyond specific theoretical approaches. Furthermore, we discuss the pros and cons of individual measures of therapeutic goals compared with standardised self-rating instruments. Finally, we underline the lack of studies on therapeutic goals in the psychiatric sphere and report on some results of our own pilot study on the Personal Goals Questionnaire in psychiatric inpatients.