Enrico Jones, 55; Professor Expert in How Psychotherapy Works

Enrico Edison Jones, 55, a UC Berkeley professor who was a pioneer in the empirical study of psychotherapy, died Saturday at UC San Francisco Medical Center after a three-year battle with bone marrow cancer.

Jones was a professor of psychology and a psychoanalyst whose research focused on how psychotherapy works. He studied such factors as how the gender of a therapist may hinder or help a psychotherapeutic relationship.

In the gender study, which involved 160 patients who had completed outpatient therapy, he found that a woman probably would fare better with a counselor of the same sex than with a male therapist. Women therapists tended to be more positive than men in assessing the outcome of treatment.

Jones also led efforts to train minorities in psychology, which earned him a Kenneth and Mamie Clark Award from the American Psychological Assn. in 1996. He was the senior editor of the anthology Minority Mental Health, published in 1982, which has become a standard reference work in the field. He also wrote “Therapeutic Action: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Therapy,” published in 2000, as well as more than 60 research papers, book chapters and reviews.

Jones was born in Munich, where his father was serving with the U.S. military. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1969 and his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1974. He received further training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute.