Forty‐nine coded twenty‐minute transcript segments sampled at six‐week intervals from the conjoint treatment of eleven families were examined. Coding procedures tapped both participation and affective expression (Emergency, Welfare, and Neutral) of family members and the quantity, direction, and quality of therapists' interventions. The families were assigned to two outcome groups on the basis of change scores in four areas (Overall; Affective Involvement; Affective Communication and Affective Expression) derived from the independent ratings of pre and post‐therapy interviews by three judges (73 percent agreement). A two‐way analysis of variance applied to the Good and Poor Outcome group coding data indicated an increase in Welfare feelings, a sharp decrease in Neutral speech paralleled by an initial rise then leveling off of Emergency. For any given therapist‐family unit, therapist's output remained within a unique range, the level of which rose gradually only in the Good Outcome group. Therapists focused increasingly on only one family member, usually a parent, the parent initially most talkative. A Good Outcome resulted when the father was initially the more vocal parent, a Poor Outcome when mother outtalked father. The Drive‐Interpretation ratio decreased as therapy progressed. The initial level of this ratio was positively related to outcome and inversely to drop‐out rate.

Nazi concentration camp survivors are known to continue to suffer the adverse physical and psychological effects of their internment. This is a study of the effects on their children. A clinical sample of mid‐teenage children of survivors was found to have more behavioral and other disturbances and less adequate coping behavior than did a clinical control group. Parental preoccupation is suggested as a contributing factor.

No abstract

Coders have difficulty in achieving a level of 70% agreement in coding transcripts of affective interaction in conjoint family therapy. Contributing factors are (a) difficulties in defining coding categories and coding rules, (6) differences in coders' sophistication, and (c) variations in their attitudes toward coding. These difficulties have been partially solved by defining the coding categories and rules more rigorously. Coders may then still disagree on who is speaking to whom because of ambiguity in intrafamilial communication. When coders disagree on who is speaking to whom, they also disagree on the type of affect being expressed. If family members have the same difficulty as coders, therapists should focus on helping the family clarify indirect communication, thereby improving affective problem solving.Many authors have documented the process of reliably coding individual psychotherapy sessions (

One hundred adolescent cases admitted to an in‐patient unit were studied to determine how often conjoint family therapy was used. Although the explicit policy of the ward was to use this form of treatment in all cases, in fact only fifty per cent were so treated. This paper reviews the possible explanations for this.