Jack Keefe, Ph.D.

When wearing my academic hat, I am first and foremost a psychotherapy researcher. The art and practice of psychotherapy is important to me, and I am fascinated by questions of what works in psychotherapy for whom, why psychotherapy is useful when it is helpful, and what is most important about the process of psychotherapy. While my specialty is understanding psychodynamic therapies (somewhat trickier than therapies like CBT in some ways), I have also conducted research into cognitive-behavioral treatments like cognitive therapy for depression, prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy for PTSD, and dialectical behavior therapy. My research has been recognized with two Scientific Paper Prizes from the American Psychoanalytic Association.

How Therapy Works

A central question in my research is what actually changes during psychotherapy — not just whether people feel better, but what shifts in how they understand themselves and relate to others along the way. I have studied how patients develop a deeper capacity to make sense of their own emotional experiences and symptoms over the course of treatment, and how that growing self-understanding contributes to lasting improvement. I am also interested in what therapists do that helps: how the emotional intensity of therapy sessions, the use of therapeutic interpretation, and the quality of the patient-therapist relationship each contribute to change. Some of this work has involved large-scale reviews that synthesize findings across many studies to draw broader conclusions about what therapeutic processes matter most and what treatment approaches seem effective on the whole.

Matching Patients to Treatments

While many therapies are generally helpful, not everyone responds to the same therapy in the same way (nevermind that every therapy entails a different relationship between two people). A second line of my research uses statistical tools to try to identify, in advance, which patients are most likely to benefit from which form of treatment. This work has focused especially on personality disorders and PTSD.

Current and Emerging Projects

I am also studying how living in an environment that is hostile toward sexual and gender minorities affects mental health and the experience of therapy. For example, in a large national study of college counseling centers, my collaborators and I found that while LGBTQ students enter therapy with more distress, therapy was just as effective for them regardless of how much anti-LGBTQ stigma existed in their surrounding community, suggesting that therapy can serve as a meaningful buffer, even in difficult environments.

I am currently leading a funded study (supported by the American Psychological Foundation and APA Division 39) examining what happens when people turn to AI chatbots for emotional support or therapy. The project explores who is drawn to AI as a source of care, what kinds of relationships and expectations people develop with these tools, and whether sustained use helps or potentially harms more vulnerable individuals.

I am also beginning work on the psychology of lasting change in psychedelic-assisted therapies — in particular, the relationship between personality, the nature of the psychedelic experience itself, and the psychological shifts that help people sustain improvement over time.

Publications

A full list of my publications is available on Google Scholar and ResearchGate.