The Association Between Complex Types of Therapist Interventions and Outcomes in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Abstract

The association between complex types of therapist interventions and psychotherapy outcome was investigated by comparing five individual therapy cases with good outcomes to four with poor outcomes. Therapist behaviors in the third session of 20 sessions of psychodynamic psychotherapy were analyzed by four different rating systems. These ratings were used individually and in combination to investigate group differences between good- and poor-outcome cases. Results demonstrated that therapists in the poor-outcome cases exhibited significantly more disaffiliative communications and significantly more disaffiliative interpretive communications that did not focus on the therapist-client relationship or client affect. Additionally, results indicated that interpretive communications and communications that focused on the therapist- client relationship were most prone to being used in a disaffiliative manner. Implications for social work practice and further research are discussed.