Early and Later Predictors of Outcome in Brief Therapy: The Role of Real Relationship

Objectives The study examined whether clients who continued longer in brief therapy reported stronger associations of real relationship and working alliance with therapy outcome than clients who received very brief treatment. It also examined whether real relationship and working alliance assessed early in treatment predicted outcome differently from that assessed later in therapy. Method Fifty clients (32 women; Mage = 22.3 years) were recruited from a university counseling center. Thirty-two clients (very brief therapy) completed the post-third session assessment of real relationship and working alliance, and 18 (brief therapy) had both the third and eighth assessment. Results The real re…

"Relation of the real relationship and the working alliance to the outcome of brief psychotherapy": Correction to Lo Coco, Gullo, Prestano, and Gelso (2011).

Relation of the real relationship and the working alliance to the outcome of brief psychotherapy.

In this study, the (a) association of the client- and therapist-rated strength of the real relationship to the outcome of brief psychotherapy, and (b) extent to which the real relationship predicted outcome above and beyond the predictive power of the working alliance were examined. A total of 50 clients at the counseling center of a university in Italy received brief therapy and completed measures before treatment, after the third session, and at the end of treatment. From the clients' perspective, both the Genuineness element of the real relationship and the Bond scale of the working alliance were found to relate significantly to treatment outcome. When we examined the real relationship a…