Evaluating Alliance-focused Intervention for Potential Treatment Failures: a Feasibility Study and Descriptive Analysis

This article describes a pilot study evaluating the feasibility of an approach developed to test the efficacy of a therapeutic intervention (brief relational therapy) for patients with whom it is difficult to establish a therapeutic alliance. In the first phase of the study, 60 patients were randomly assigned to either short-term dynamic therapy (STDP) or short-term cognitive therapy (CBT), and their progress in the first eight sessions of treatment was monitored. On the basis of a number of empirically derived criteria, 18 potential treatment failures were identified. In the second phase of the study, these identified patients were offered the option of being reassigned to another treatment. The 10 patients who agreed to switch treatments were reassigned either to the alliance-focused treatment, referred to as brief relational therapy (BRT), or a control condition. For patients coming from CBT, the control condition was STDP. For patients coming from STDP, the control condition was CBT. The results provide preliminary evidence supporting the potential value of BRT as an intervention that is useful in the context of alliance ruptures.