Client change in therapy is a result of the psychological impact of the counseler's remarks on the client. A remark the client perceives to imply a change generates psychological forces impelling as well as restraining change. Impelling forces arise from the power-dependence relationship between the counselor and client. Restraining forces are resistance and. opposition. Counselor power arises from the correspondence of the client's need for change and the counselor's resources which mediate need fulfillment. Resistance arises from the perceived legitimacy of the counselor's proposing a change, while opposition is a function of the benefits of current behavior which would be lost if the change were made. Sources and characteristics of power, resistance, and opposition are presented. Overall, therapy is presented as a series of strategies that systematically operate on the magnitude and direction of the components of the behavior-change process.
Strong (1970) proposed that a counselor could change a client's view of self by controlling the client's information about norms, alternative actions, and personal history. These hypotheses were tested in a two-step experiment in which college students first reacted to a standard event and then reviewed their reactions in an interview in which the interviewer controlled the information the students had to evaluate their actions. A strong effect of trait labeling and analysis of alternatives was observed, but the other variables had no effects. The results confirmed that a statement of opinion by an expert can have powerful effects on an individual's thinking.
greater the congruence between participants' expectations about psychotherapy and their actual perception of the values operating within a therapy setting, the more likely they would be to take a problem to therapy. The strength of this finding, however, does not seem at this time to be as great as that provided by individual value rankings in predicting decisions to either enter or remain in psychotherapy.As stated earlier, analyses for this study are still in progress. The preliminary findings suggest that value systems may prove to be effective predictors of patients' behaviors within a therapeutic setting. Provided that the final analysis of data is consistent with the aforementioned trends, extensions of the present study to include actual patient populations would certainly be indicated.The concept of values is troublesome for psychology in general and psychotherapy in particular. More than other people, psychotherapists daily see what appear to be the wide-ranging effects of human values. People change careers, change spouses, change life-styles, and sometimes die for what they claim are their values. Yet, our empirically based conceptions of therapy tend to treat values as peripheral to the change process. In behavioral theory values are conditioned verbal responses. In psychoanalytic theory they are manifestations of defense mechanisms (Rokeach 1973). Even the recent cognitive * An earlier version of this paper was published in Counseling and Values, 1976,21, 2-11. Ronald P. Matross is a research associate with student life studies and planning at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
A fundamental problem in the area of human values is the mechanism by which values affect overt behavior. The idea that values have a powerful directive force on behavior is intuitively appealing but difficult to operationalize. As Guthrie (1952) contended when he said that Tolman's learning theory left the rat in the maze "buried in thought," cognitive theories have tended to be insufficiently specific about the nature of the cognition-behavior relationship. Cognitive theories have traditionally criticized the oversimplifications of behavior theories rather than provide workable alternative conceptualizations (Bergin 1970).Recent cognitive approaches to psychotherapy (Beck 1970; Mahoney 1974;Meichenbaum 1975) have made considerable progress toward giving the clinician operational and testable alternatives to conditioning procedures. These newer cognitive therapies have concentrated on changing clients' behavior by altering highly specific, irrational beliefs about themselves and their environment; however, they have paid little attention to the more existential, valuing aspects of human experience. The most profound value dilemmas confronting many clients continue to be out of the province of scientific theories of psychotherapy.In the current theoretical environment, multidimensional therapists who wish to serve the total client often find themselves radically shifting conceptual bases during the course of therapy. They may alternate interpretive therapy based on existential or dynamic approaches with cognitive restructuring procedures and behavior therapy techniques. There is a great need for unifying conceptualizations that will specify not only relationships among individual beliefs and behaviors but also relationships between these elements and cardinal life-directing values. Ronald P. Matross is a Research Associate, Student Life Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
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