The population of mothers and their daughters, mostly low in educational and socioeconomic status, were randomly assigned to receive no treatment, a discussion-oriented traditional treatment, or a Relationship Enhancement (Parent Adolescent Relationship Development) treatment. There was no improvement without treatment. Participation in the traditional treatment-which was designed to improve (a) specific communication skills, (b) general communication patterns, and (c) the general quality of the relationship-resulted in improvement on three of the five measures of c. The improvement on one of these measures raised them above their no-treatment counterparts at posttreatment. Participants in Relationship Enhancement improved significantly and reached higher levels than participants in both other conditions on each of the measures assessing areas a, b, and c. The two treatments were very closely matched on all nonindependent variables and were implemented in equally credible fashion. Therefore, in addition to concluding that Relationship Enhancement is superior to a traditional discussion-oriented treatment, it can be concluded that a significant portion of its effectiveness stems from the particular methods it employs rather than from nonspecific factors such as experimenter demand, placebo, attention, and thank-you effects.Mental health professionals have come to dura, 1967; Guerney, Guerney, & Stollak, recognize the need to develop more econom-1971; ical, efficient, and effective methods of help-in an attempt to increase the efficiency and ing the emotionally troubled (e.g., Albee, effectiveness of psychotherapy. 1968a;Guerney, 1969;Hobbs, 1964). The Relationship Enhancement (Guerney, attempt to do so has involved increasing use 1977) is a method that makes use of this of training as treatment (Carkhuff & Bier-strategy. Although originally developed with man, 1970; Guerney, 1964; Guerney, Stol-and for family therapy clients, Relationship lak, & Guerney, 1970) and changing the role Enhancement methods may also be used for model of the therapist from that of healer problem prevention and enrichment. The to that of teacher (Albee, 1968b; Authier, method has demonstrated empirically its ef-Gustafson, Guerney, & Kasdorf, 1975; Ban-ficacy in improving individual and interpersonal adjustment with a variety of popula-This research was supported by National Institute of tions: young children (Guerney, 1964; Mental Health Grant 1 R01 MH 22807 and is based Guerney 1976 ) fathers and sons (Ginsberg, in part on the doctoral dissertations 01 the first and . ""_ ^ 10 ^~c .