The purpose of this study was to understand how the real relationship (RR) relates to important process and outcome variables from both the clients' and therapists' perspectives. Using a sample of 31 therapist/client dyads at a university counseling center, the authors examined the RR at the 3rd session of therapy and at termination. The results revealed that client adult attachment avoidance was negatively correlated with client RR, while client adult attachment anxiety was uncorrelated. Therapists' ratings of negative transference were negatively correlated with therapist-rated RR and were uncorrelated with client-rated RR. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses were conducted to predict postintervention outcome from client and therapist perceptions of the RR. Therapists' ratings of the RR accounted for a significant amount of variance in client posttreatment symptoms while controlling pretreatment symptoms. Client-rated RR total scores and client and therapist 3rd-session alliance scores were not significant predictors of postsymptom ratings. Implications of the usefulness of measuring the RR in psychotherapy are discussed, as are recommendations for future study.

No abstract

This study sought to assess the association of client- and therapist-rated real relationship with each other and with the outcome of brief psychotherapy. It also aimed to determine whether changes over time in perceptions of the real relationship and increasing convergence between clients' and therapists' ratings of the real relationship were associated with outcome. Forty-two clients and their therapists (n = 19) at 2 university counseling centers completed measures assessing the strength of their real relationship after every session of brief psychotherapy. They also completed an outcome measure at the end of treatment. Clients' ratings of the real relationship after the first session, first quarter of treatment, and after all sessions combined related to outcomes. Therapists' ratings of the real relationship at these time points did not relate to outcome. However, increases over time in therapists' ratings of real relationship strength, as well as increasing convergence with clients' ratings of the real relationship, did relate to outcome. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

The relationship between treatment progress (as rated by both clients and therapists) and real relationship (also rated by both clients and therapists) was decomposed into between-therapist and within-therapist (between-client) effects and analyzed using the actor-partner interdependence model. We reanalyzed a subset of the data, 12 therapists and 32 clients, from Gelso et al.'s (2012) study of brief, theoretically diverse outpatient treatment. Consistent with and extending previous research, clients whose therapists provided higher average levels of client-perceived real relationship across the clients treated by a given therapist had better progress ratings from both themselves and their therapists. Within each therapist's caseload, differences between clients in client- or therapist-rated real relationship were unrelated to either client- or therapist-rated outcome. Clients whose therapists provided higher average levels of therapist-perceived real relationship, across the clients treated by the therapist, had worse progress ratings from the therapists. The results provide additional evidence for the importance of between-therapist differences in therapeutic relationship qualities, both client and therapist rated.

This paper argues that there is a cultural taboo against the public recognition and expression of perinatal grief that hinders parents' ability to mourn and their psychological adjustment following a loss. It is proposed that this cultural taboo is recreated within the therapy relationship, as feelings of grief over a perinatal loss are minimized or avoided by the therapist and parent or patient. Importantly, it is suggested that if these cultural dynamics are recognized within the therapy relationship, then psychotherapy has the immense opportunity to break the taboo by validating the parent's loss as real and helping the parent to mourn within an empathic and affect-regulating relationship. Specifically, it is suggested that therapists break the cultural taboo against perinatal grief and help parents to mourn through: acknowledging and not pathologizing perinatal grief reactions, considering intrapsychic and cultural factors that impact a parent's response to loss, exploring cultural reenactments within the therapy relationship, empathizing with the parent's experience of loss and of having to grieve within a society that does not recognize perinatal loss, coregulating the parent's feelings of grief and loss, and helping patients to create personally meaningful mourning rituals. Lastly, the impact of within and between cultural differences and therapist attitudes on the therapy process is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record