Predictive Validity of Patient and Therapist Attachment and Introject Styles (original) (raw)

This study assessed introject and attachment styles of patients and therapists, and the match of these styles in patient/therapist dyads, to determine their relation to various psychotherapy process and outcome measures. The IN TREX was used to measure introject style (affiliation and autonomy) and the Relationship Scale Questionaire to measure attachment style (secure, fearfu preoccupied, dismissing). Therapists with more affiliative (self loving) and secure styles achieve better outcome results compared to therapists with les affiliative (self hating) and insecure styles. Further, the greater the difference in introject and attachment styles within the patient/therapist dyad, the better the outcome. There is a considerable body of evidence that a significant proportion of patients fail to benefit from psychotherapy. Treatment failure can occur for a number of reasons, including dissonance in the therapeutic relationship, inadequate or poor treatment, therapist problems, personality styles of therapist and patient, premature drop-out (Wierzbicki & Perkarik, 1993; Westin & Morrison, 2001), and many other possible causes. Personality traits of patients and therapists have received a lot of attention in an attempt to identify factors in predicting the development of a working alliance and in contributing to improved therapy process and outcome. Studies using interpersonal circumplex models found that hostile-dominant patient problems were negatively related to the alliance, while friendly-submissive problems were positively related to both alliance and outcome (