Brief and Single-Session Therapy

As sport psychology has evolved, sport psychology consultants have broadened their understanding and use of new theoretical and therapeutic approaches. Single-session therapy (SST) gained traction as the briefest form of therapy through the seminal work of Moshe Talmon. SST can be practiced from a variety of theoretical perspectives, whether this be narrative therapy, solution-focused therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, or others. This chapter explores the current theoretical understanding within SST; work mostly drawn from other therapeutic settings and reviews the limited research that has explored these ideas within sport psychology. It presents a series of vignettes to provide examples of how SST principles can be applied in the field. The chapter concludes by outlining directions for future research and offer some notes of caution when applying SST in sport psychology contexts.