To improve the quality of psychotherapy, computer-assisted feedback and monitoring systems to evaluate continuously an ongoing course of therapy have gained increased importance in psychotherapy research. They can provide both therapists and the patients themselves with feedback about the progress of the treatment to date while psychotherapy is still taking place. The information gained from them can be used to match the treatment better to patients’ individual needs.

This work presents an Internet-based real-time monitoring method, the Synergetic Navigation System (SNS). This is based on a daily self-assessment by the patient, and is thus characterized by recording the therapy process at particularly narrow time intervals. The technology is illustrated by means of a single case example of a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder who took part in a two-month inpatient behavioural therapy.

It can be shown that SNS time-series analysis enables the whole course of therapy to be depicted well, without any serious time delay, and it is possible to record phases in which therapeutic interventions are particularly effective (phases of critical instability).

On the one hand monitoring a psychotherapy is useful for psychotherapy research because it enables the dynamics of the therapy progress to be investigated better and it is possible to identify exactly which therapeutic intervention at which time produces what effect on the patient. On the other hand it is useful for the psychotherapist who is working mainly clinically, because the regular feedback enables him to match his therapy to the patient's specific needs.