We investigated the antecedents, occurrences, and consequences of 183 silence events in the first 5 and last 5 sessions of a 73-session case of successful psychodynamic psychotherapy. Silences generally occurred within client speaking turns, such that the client often paused to reflect while speaking. In the last 5 sessions, as compared with the first 5 sessions, the client was more collaborative before and after silences, silences were shorter, the therapist was more connectional during silences (e.g., shared emotion and meaning with client), and the client was more emotional after silences. Antecedent client collaboration, duration of the silence, therapist behavior during silence events, client behavior during silence events, and who broke the silence all related to change in collaboration from before to after the silence events. We concluded that silence was helpful in this case because of client factors (the client naturally paused a lot during discussion, the client was quite reflective and insightful), therapist factors (the therapist was comfortable with and believed in silence), and relationship factors (there was a strong therapeutic relationship).

Using data from 3,263 sessions nested within 144 clients, nested within 19 therapists, we examined client- and therapist-rated working alliance (WA) and real relationship (RR) at Session 3 and growth in WA and RR across the course of open-ended psychodynamic psychotherapy for clients who identified as racial/ethnic minority (REM) or as White. To be included in the analyses, therapists had to work with at least 2 REM and 2 White clients. There were no significant therapist effects for the interaction between client- or therapist-rated WA and client REM status at Session 3, or for client- or therapist-rated RR and client REM status at Session 3. There were, however, significant therapist effects due to client REM status on the interaction between client-rated linear growth in WA and RR, showing that some therapists had stronger WA and RR growth with REM than that with White clients, whereas other therapists had stronger alliance growth with White than that with REM clients. There were significant therapist effects on therapist-rated linear growth in both WA and RR, which indicated that some therapists reported stronger WA and RR growth with all of their clients, whereas other therapists reported weaker WA and RR growth for all of their clients, although this differential WA and RR growth was not related to clients' REM status. Implications for practice and research are discussed in this paper. (PsycINFO Database Record

Ten doctoral student therapists (8 White, 5 female) in 1 counseling psychology doctoral program located in the Mid-Atlantic United States were interviewed for approximately 1 hour each about their experiences of feeling offended by a client during an individual psychotherapy session. Interview data were analyzed with consensual qualitative research (CQR). Trainee therapists typically felt offended related to their sociocultural identities (e.g., being a woman, LGBTQϩ, racial-ethnic minority), felt frozen after the events and uncertain about how to respond, wished they had handled the events differently, and struggled when clients expressed opinions or beliefs that ran counter to their own values. Trainees had difficulty maintaining an empathic, nonjudgmental therapeutic stance where they could both value the client and maintain their own sense of integrity and beliefs about social justice and multiculturalism. Implications for training, practice, and research are provided. Public Significance StatementDoctoral student therapists reported on instances in which they felt offended by clients related to cultural or value differences. Therapists typically felt frozen and unsure of how to handle such situations, especially given their own countertransferential reactions, but wished they had handled the situations differently. These findings highlight the importance of training to provide therapists with tools to become more self-aware of inadmissible feelings and of alternative ways of handling difficult situations.

We examined how client working alliance (CWA) and therapist working alliance (TWA), and client-rated functioning (Outcome Rating Scale, ORS) related to client-perceived Cultural Humility (CH) of their therapist across the course of open-ended psychodynamic psychotherapy for 118 clients and 17 therapists. Clients and therapists completed measures of the WA after every session and clients completed the ORS prior to every session. Clients also judged their therapists' CH at Session 3, 8, and then every 8th session. CH data was partitioned into within-client, within-therapist, and between-therapists components and used to predict CWA, TWA, and ORS in a 4-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) growth model. Betweentherapist differences in CH were not related to next session CWA, TWA, or ORS, nor were these differences related to growth in CWA, TWA, and ORS. Within-therapist differences in CH were only related to the next session's CWA. At the within-client level, time-periods with higher CH, compared to clients' average CH, were associated with stronger next session (i.e., the immediate subsequent session) CWA and TWA, and time periods with lower CH, compared to clients' average CH, were associated with linear increase in CWA and TWA. Time-periods with high CH, compared to clients' average CH, were associated with significant increase in client functioning. Results suggest that lower CH weakens CWA and TWA in the next session but both CWA and TWA strengthen subsequently. By contrast, greater CH has no immediate effect on outcome but with greater CH psychological functioning increased over time. Implications for practice and research are discussed. Public Significance StatementWhen clients see their therapist as more humble toward their cultural identity than their therapist usually is, next session alliances are strong but this effect is attenuated over time. When clients see their therapist as less humble toward their cultural identity than their therapist usually is, the immediate subsequent session alliance is weak but strengthens over the next several sessions. Therefore it is important for therapists to find ways to demonstrate cultural humility week-to-week.

We used the truth and bias model to examine changes in tracking accuracy and under/overestimation (directional bias) on therapists' judgments about clients' satisfaction. We examined 3 factors of clinical experience that could moderate accuracy: (a) overall level of acquaintanceship with a client, operationalized as treatment length (i.e., less or more time seeing a client), (b) time point in therapy with a specific client, operationalized as session number (i.e., earlier or later in treatment with a client), and (c) order (1st client seen, 2nd client seen . . . last client seen across two years of training in a psychology clinic) in which clients were seen. We conducted a three-level hierarchical linear modeling using data on 6054 sessions, nested in 284 adult clients, nested in 41 doctoral student therapists providing open-ended psychodynamic individual psychotherapy. We found that therapists were able to accurately track client-rated session evaluations with less underestimation (i.e., lower tendency to estimate that clients were less satisfied than they actually were) as they gained experience (both treatment length and client order). Furthermore, therapists exhibited greater tracking accuracy gains over the span of shorter treatments and when working with clients earlier in their clinical training. In longer treatments and with clients seen later in training, tracking accuracy was stable and consistent. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Public Significance StatementWe found that therapists improve in their accuracy in assessing clients' satisfaction with clinical experience. Therapist became more accurate as they conducted more sessions with individual clients but did not gain as much accuracy with respect to seeing subsequent clients. Therapists improved significantly in their ability to accurately track client satisfaction in shorter treatments while accuracy remained consistently high and stable in longer treatments.