Backround
Increasingly, the perspectives of processes of change, dynamics of change and principles of change have come to replace the medical-model based conception of “which methods works with what clients” as a theoretical and functional paradigm in psychotherapy research.The concept of the working alliance is well-established example of this change in perspective.
In this panel the first results from an intensive study of 18 highly experienced psychotherapists are presented. The psychotherapists are all teachers of psychotherapy at reputable psychotherapy training institutions, have a high standing in the therapeutic community, are all specialists in clinical psychology or psychiatry, represent different theoretical orientations and most are clinical authors.
Methods
There is a focus on qualitative method in these naturalistic therapies. However, standard outcome measures are collected pre-treatment, post-treatment and at follow up, in addition to at session 3,6,12, 20, and thereafter every 20 sessions. The Working Alliance Inventory is also collected at the same in-therapy sessions.All sessions are audio-taped.An important feature of this is four session evaluation questions answered by therapists and clients after each session.A post-therapy interview of client and therapists are conducted.
This panel presents three papers from this study of assumed expert therapists addressing results on alliance formation and alliance repair.
Keywords
- Working alliance
- Alliance rupture
- Alliance repair
- Psychotherapy-trainers
- Mixed methods
- Tasks
- Techniques
- Moderators of alliance