Effects of therapist confrontation on subsequent client and therapist behavior during the first therapy interview.

Abstract

First interview tape recordings of 13 high-and 32 low-facilitative therapists were studied in terms of relative change in client self-exploration and therapist levels of accurate empathy, positive regard, and genuineness after therapist-initiated confrontation. Although the absolute effect of confrontation appeared to be minimal, there were significant differences in the relative change scores of high-and low-facilitative therapists, particularly as a function of client categorization. A consistent finding was that across facilitative conditions, the low facilitators generally changed significantly more than the high facilitators, and significantly more so with students than with patients.A large number of studies (summarized by Carkhuff & Berenson, 1967; Truax & Carkhuff, 1967; and Truax & Mitchell, 1971) have demonstrated a significant relationship between therapist levels of accurate empathy, positive regard, and genuineness and client outcome. These studies show that therapists are not homogeneous (Kiesler, 1966) and at least two broad groups of therapists have been identified, those who offer at least minimally facilitative levels of the above-mentioned conditions and pro-

Self-Confrontation Reviewed: A Conceptualization for Video Playback in Teacher Education

“…Video feedback did not help teachers recall personal, professional, or perceptual problems (Roberts, 1971), and therapeutic confrontation in the first psychotherapy session had little impact on client self-exploration during the three-minute period following confrontation (Mitchell & Namenek, 1972 sort (Barron, 1967), but did not reduce dogmatism measured by the Rokeach Scale (Hughes, 1969). Video feedback did not help teachers recall personal, professional, or perceptual problems (Roberts, 1971), and therapeutic confrontation in the first psychotherapy session had little impact on client self-exploration during the three-minute period following confrontation (Mitchell & Namenek, 1972 sort (Barron, 1967), but did not reduce dogmatism measured by the Rokeach Scale (Hughes, 1969).…”

“…They get the client to acknowledge his discrepant perceptions (Berenson, Mitchell, & Laney, 1968;Berenson, Mitchell, & Moravec, 1968;Mitchell & Namenek, 1972). They get the client to acknowledge his discrepant perceptions (Berenson, Mitchell, & Laney, 1968;Berenson, Mitchell, & Moravec, 1968;Mitchell & Namenek, 1972).…”

The effect of social class and cognitive orientation on clinical expectations

“…The failure of these studies to find preferential expectations of working-class therapists for working-class clients, as has been found previously (Kahn et al, 1966;Mitchell & Namenek, 1970), may be due to a lack of variability in social class within the sample of clinical psychologists. There is some evidence that therapists tend to come from homogeneous backgrounds (Jones, 1974), but this is not universally agreed (Reiss, 1966).…”

“…Evidence indicating the importance of the match between psychotherapists' and clients' social class as a determinant of therapists' expectations of clinical outcome (Heine & Trosman, 1960;Schneiderman, 1965;Lee & Temerlin, 1970;Mitchell & Namenek, 1970) underscore the attention given to social class as an explanatory variable in studies of psychotherapy. Some (Jones, 1974;Parloff et al, 1978) have argued that therapists' perceptions of social class act directly to determine the outcome of therapy.…”