Articles Tagged "alliance"

The association between the therapeutic alliance and outcome is now well-established and widely known (Flückiger et al., 2018), highlighting a need to better understand the factors that influence the quality of the alliance. Thinking around therapists’ capacities to establish and maintain the alliance has grown increasingly sophisticated, as researchers have long-investigated ruptures and repairs in […]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between alliance measures and improvement on the outcome measure for clients in longer term treatment (six to 20 sessions). This is the second of a two part series. The first article (Mahon et al., 2021) explored the relationship between alliance scores and improvement on the […]

The therapeutic alliance (Bordin, 1979) remains one of the most studied constructs in psychotherapy outcome research (Norcross & Lambert, 2019), and is a robust predictor of client outcome (Flückiger et al., 2018; 2020; Wampold & Imel, 2015). It has been established that therapists vary in their ability to build and maintain an effective alliance, which […]

Abstract The therapeutic alliance predicts dropout from psychological therapy, and ruptures in the therapeutic alliance may also predict dropout, yet there is a dearth of research with adolescents. This study investigated whether markers of rupture–repair in the alliance were indicative of different types of treatment ending in adolescents receiving psychological treatment for depression. Data were from the IMPACT study, […]

Ample research suggests that therapists differ in their level of effectiveness (Blow et. al., 2007; Wampold, 2001). Even more striking is that therapist effects appear to be larger than treatment effects (e.g., Lindgren et al., 2010). These findings suggest that “who” the therapist is may be more important than the type of treatment used. Moreover, […]

For more than 20 years, our attachment research teams at Western Michigan University (WMU) have been using Bowlby’s attachment theory to examine important psychotherapy process and outcome variables. What have we found? Generally speaking, client and therapist attachment do matter in psychotherapy—often times, in many of the same ways that John Bowlby would have predicted. […]

Many therapists in training, and even experienced therapists, anticipate working with couples and families with trepidation. As family therapists and researchers, we understand that trepidation, and indeed, sometimes find ourselves experiencing these same feelings! However, we know that understanding systemic interactions really helps in learning to work with couples and families; thus, we offer some […]

The interpersonal difficulties experienced by patients diagnosed with a personality disorder (PD) can pose difficulty in negotiating a strong therapeutic alliance between patient and therapist (Muran, Segal, Samstag, & Crawford, 1994; Stern, 1938; Vaillant, 1992; Waldinger & Gunderson, 1984). For instance, therapists of patients diagnosed with Cluster B (i.e., “dramatic, emotional, erratic”) PDs often rate […]

Due to changes in demographics in the United States, counselors and therapists are likely to serve clients who have a culturally diverse background. Data from the 2010 United States (U.S.) Census indicated that foreign-born individuals represented 13.3% of the U.S. population, some 42.3 million people (Colby & Ortman, 2014). In 2014, the U.S. population by […]

The interpersonal difficulties experienced by patients diagnosed with a personality disorder (PD) tend to pose great difficulty in negotiating a strong therapeutic alliance between patient and therapist (Muran, Segal, Samstag, & Crawford, 1994; Stern, 1938; Vaillant, 1992; Waldinger & Gunderson, 1984). Patients with PDs often generate intense and uncomfortable reactions in their therapists, sometimes producing […]