Effects on clients of a reflective and a leading type of psychotherapy

The fundamental purpose of this project was to analyze many different variables and to assess their relationship to therapy. The effects of two independent variables were examined in this study. The first was the type of therapy administered and the second was the therapist as an individual. The type of therapy was manipulated by defining two families of therapist verbal responses. This family of responses included restatement of content, reflection of feeling, nondirective leads, and nondirective structuring responses. This therapy was built largely on the Rogerian approach. The second family of responses was composed of directive leads, interpretations, directive structuring, approval, encouragement, suggestion, advice, information giving, and persuasion. The major criteria used in selecting the client variables were: (a) the measure had to have a logical and meaningful relationship to the therapeutic process; (b) the measure had to be obtainable without placing unreasonable demands on the client population; and (c) the measure should reasonably be expected to demonstrate differences between a reflective and a leading type of psychotherapy. The view that a leading and a reflective type of therapy produce different effects on clients was slightly supported. The view that individual therapists create different effects on their clients independent of the type of therapy given is partially supported. Therapists in this study differed significantly in the defensive and positive feelings they elicited from their clients during the first eight interviews. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)