Psychotherapy relationships that work: therapist contributions and responsiveness to patients.

Unpacking the effects of therapist responsiveness in borderline personality disorder: motive-oriented therapeutic relationship, patient in-session experience, and the therapeutic alliance.

An overview of countertransference with borderline patients.

Successful management of countertransference is critical to the psychotherapy of borderline patients. The author discusses the most common countertransference reactions encountered in such treatments. A theoretical framework is also proposed that conceptualizes countertransference as a joint creation between therapist and patient. It follows from this conceptual framework that therapists must c...

Reinforcement matters_ A preliminary, laboratory-based component-process analysis of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy’s model of social connection

A therapeutic model of social connection derived from Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) that applies to both the client’s outside-of-therapy relationships and the psychotherapeutic relationship is explored in two studies. The model integrates established behavioral principles with existing research on the reciprocal process of self-disclosure and responsiveness that occurs during developm...

Quality of working alliance in psychotherapy: therapist variables and patient/therapist similarity as predictors.

Therapist characteristics were explored as possible predictors of working alliance, rated early and later in therapy both by therapists (n=59) and patients (n=270) in an ongoing multisite project on process and outcome of psychotherapy. Patients and therapists had divergent perspectives on the working alliance. Therapists' experience, training, skill, and progress as therapists did not have any...

The Dodo-bird Debate, Empirically Supported Relationships and Functional Analytic Psychotherapy

The dodo-bird verdict has haunted the literature on psychotherapy outcome since its early beginnings. It is based on the counter-intuitive finding that often highly diverging treatments do not differ much in effectiveness. There is evidence that much of the common effect of different treatments can be related to unspecific factors as opposed to treatment-specific techniques. The present paper o...