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Two aspects of psychotherapy expressed in the following two hypotheses were investigated in 36 college student clients and their six psychotherapists.(1) A minimal degree of communication between client and therapist, within the client's language dimensions, is essential for improvement in psychotherapy. (2) Improvement in ps) chotherapy is accompanied by a shift in the present-self of the client toward the ideal of the therapist as described within the framework of the client's language dimensions. Both hypotheses were confirmed. The results were related to previous studies and the apparent inconsistencies tentatively explained in terms of different psychotherapeutic settings and approaches.The personal characteristics of the therapist, his values, ideals and attitudes, and how these affect the process of psychotherapy, are increasingly coming under close research scrutiny. That this aspect of the therapeutic process is still relatively uncharted and in a fluid state is attested to by the paucity of studies in this area and by the inconsistencies of the results of the few contributions made so far.In his presentation of a formalized sketch for a theory of interpretation in psychotherapy, Levy (1963) postulates that "the effect of interpretation is predictable to the extent that therapist and patient possess a common core of language meaning and usage," which can be interpreted to imply that success is linearly related to the degree with which patient and therapist "share the same frame of reference." Carson and Heine (1962) found not a linear but a curvilinear relationship between the similarities of client-therapist MMPI responses and treat-

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Two groups of Ss received systematic desensitization for “snakephobia.” 9 Ss were led to expect anxiety reduction from desensitization; another 9 were not. Changes in snake-avoidance for these two groups were compared with changes displayed by 9 Ss who received no treatment.

Twelve most improved and 8 least improved clients were used in testing the hypothesis that improvement in therapy is contingent upon the adoption by the client of the personal meaning system of his therapist. The hypothesis was rejected. There was a trend indicating that the most improved client tends to increase in his preference for his own frame of reference, that he tends to become more himself rather than an echo of his therapist. The least improved client tends to internalize the therapist's frame of reference. These conclusions are highly tentative, but suggest the importance of differentiating between “frames of reference” and “specific attitudes” and considering introjection in relationship to different therapeutic approaches.