In today’s article, we will exploratorily examine the possible application of the single-session mindset within the legal field.
I am Deborah De Luca, a clinical psychologist, and in my clinical work I support individuals through change processes aimed at achieving concrete goals. I believe in a psychology capable of understanding the complexity of relationships and intervening in a focused, respectful way that is deeply oriented toward individual resources and life contexts.
Alongside my clinical practice, I am expanding my expertise in the field of forensic psychology, an area that allows me to integrate the psychological perspective with the dynamics of the legal context, working with greater awareness, rigor, and responsibility in complex settings.
As editor of this blog, I take the opportunity to share and disseminate my knowledge and reflections with the scientific community, creating a space for dialogue between theory, clinical practice, and research. Writing thus becomes a tool for exchange, growth, and dissemination, through which I contribute to an increasingly nuanced and up-to-date understanding of psychological phenomena.
My work is grounded in the meeting between listening and intervention, between theoretical reflection and field experience, with the aim of promoting meaningful and sustainable change, while respecting the uniqueness of each individual story.
And today I write this article to ask you: is it possible to integrate forensic psychology with Single-Session Therapy?
Forensic psychology and expert consultations: a naturally “single-session” setting
In courthouse corridors, time takes on a particular quality: it is dense, formal, marked by procedural acts, reports, and expert evaluations. It allows no emotional postponements and tolerates no ambiguity. Every word carries weight, every evaluation has consequences. Yet very often, precisely in this symbolic space—where subjectivity meets the law—forensic psychology is called upon to perform a delicate task: understanding the complexity of the human being within the strict boundaries of an expert mandate.
The technical consultation—court-appointed (CTU) or party-appointed (CTP)—is often a single, circumscribed, goal-oriented meeting. It is not psychotherapy in the traditional sense; it is not ongoing treatment; it is not a long-term process. Rather, it resembles a clinical hearing: a single opportunity to gather information, assess, and provide meaning. And it is precisely in this scenario that Single-Session Therapy (SST) can prove to be a surprisingly congruent theoretical and methodological model.
CTPs and CTUs are, in most cases, punctual interventions, bounded by a specific question, a formal mandate, and a defined timeframe. The professional is not called to “treat,” but to assess, understand, and return psychologically relevant elements for the legal decision-making process.
In this sense, the technical consultation is structurally comparable to a high-intensity single session. However, there is often a lack of explicit methodological reflection on how to effectively conduct this single encounter. This is where Single-Session Therapy (SST) offers a decisive contribution.
Applying the principles of Single-Session Therapy to forensic psychology
The literature on Single-Session Therapy (SST) (Talmon, Hoyt, Slive) has widely demonstrated how a single meeting, if intentionally designed, can be clinically meaningful without turning into psychotherapy. SST is based on the idea that every encounter can be sufficient, if treated as complete in itself.
Technical consultations share with SST some fundamental structural assumptions:
- a defined and non-extendable timeframe;
- a clear objective, established by the mandate;
- the absence of guaranteed follow-up.
One of the strongest points of convergence between SST and forensic psychology is precisely the centrality of the objective. In CTUs and CTPs, the objective is defined by the judge’s question or the party’s mandate, and it represents the pivot of the intervention.
The risk, however, is that this objective is treated as a purely technical variable. SST instead invites us to consider it as a narrative node—a point of intersection between the legal question and the subject’s psychological experience.
As Jerome Bruner emphasizes, “psychological reality is always mediated by narrative.” Even in the forensic context, the person brings a story: often fragmented, defensive, sometimes silent. A consultant trained in SST is skilled in working with these fragments in a focused way—without digging unnecessarily, but also without reducing human experience to a mere evaluative checklist.
Ethical and deontological aspects: the single session as a safeguarding device
Another strength of the integration between SST and forensic psychology concerns the ethical dimension. A single encounter, if conducted without clinical awareness, can become intrusive, incomplete, or even iatrogenic. SST, by contrast, was born as an ethically prudent model, grounded in the principle of not opening processes that cannot be accompanied.
In the expert context, this translates into:
- greater accuracy in formulating informed consent;
- clarity about the limits of the intervention;
- verbal feedback designed not to leave the subject emotionally exposed.
In other words, SST teaches professionals how to close well. And knowing how to close is a fundamental clinical competence when no follow-up is foreseen.
Single-Session Therapy, therefore, does not transform forensic psychology into psychotherapy, nor does it aim to overlap the clinical and legal domains.
Forensic psychology and Single-Session Therapy meet in their shared ethics of time: both operate with the awareness that the encounter is unique, that there will be no second opportunity to reformulate, repair, or deepen. Within this brief and irrevocable space, SST offers technical consultation a structure, an intentionality, and a discipline that make limited time not a constraint, but a resource.
When these two perspectives intertwine, consultation is no longer merely an evaluative act, and the single session is no longer merely a technique. They become a space of human precision: an encounter capable of holding together law and subjectivity, rigor and listening, professional distance and profound respect for the person. Because when there is only one encounter, competence lies not in doing more, but in doing exactly what is needed.
Deborah De Luca
Psychologist Expert in Brief
Systemic-Strategic Therapies
and in Forensic Psychology
Bibliography
American Psychological Association. (2013). Specialty guidelines for forensic psychology.
Bloom, B. L. (2001). Focus on single-session psychotherapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 11(1), 1–6.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press.
Hoyt, M. F., & Talmon, M. (2014). Capturing the moment: Single-session therapy and walk-in services. Crown House Publishing.
Perkins, R. (2006). The effectiveness of one-session therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 6(4), 265–272.
Talmon, M. (1990). Single-session therapy: Maximizing the effect of the first (and often only) therapeutic encounter. Jossey-Bass.