The Therapeutic Relationship

The quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist has been recognized by psychotherapy researchers and clinicians alike as playing a central role in the process and outcome of psychotherapy. This book presents innovative investigations of the therapeutic relationship, focusing on various relationship mechanisms that are connected to change in psychotherapy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychotherapy Research.

Hadas Wiseman is Associate Professor in Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research interests include therapeutic relationships and attachments and the development of psychotherapists. She is a clinical psychologist and Past President of the Society for Psychotherapy Research. Orya Tishby is Senior Lecturer in Clinical psychology and clinical social work at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Her research interests include therapeutic relationships, countertransference, and psychotherapy with adolescents. She is a clinical psychologist and supervisor.

1. Introduction: The therapeutic relationship: Multiple lenses and innovations 2. Understanding processes of change: How some patients reveal more than others - and some groups of therapists less - about what matters in psychotherapy 3. The associations among improvement and alliance expectations, alliance during treatment, and treatment outcome for major depressive disorder 4. How does the therapeutic alliance in cognitive-behavioural therapy for panic disorder develop throughout treatment? Sawtooth patterns, sudden gains, and stabilization 5. The therapeutic relationship in action: How therapists and clients co-manage relational disaffiliation 6. Therapeutic collaboration and resistance: Describing the nature and quality of the therapeutic relationship within ambivalence events using the Therapeutic Collaboration Coding System 7. Investigating the impact of alliance-focused training on interpersonal process and therapists' capacity for experiential reflection 8. To be or not to be immediate with clients: The use and perceived effects of immediacy in psychodynamic/interpersonal psychotherapy 9. The role of empathy in promoting change 10. Client attachment, attachment to the therapist and client-therapist attachment match: How do they relate to change in psychodynamic psychotherapy? 11. Types of countertransference dynamics: An exploration of their impact on the client-therapist relationship 12. Client disclosure and therapist response in psychotherapy with women with a history of childhood sexual abuse 13. Good versus poor therapeutic alliances with non-accepting parents of same-sex oriented adolescents and young adults: A qualitative study