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Researchers have demonstrated that certain interventions that focus on exploring the
here-and-now (Strupp & Binder, 1984) in-session process, including thoughts and
feelings about the treatment relationship (Safran & Muran, 2000; Wachtel, 1993) may be
more advantageous than interventions linking patient, therapist, and past others.
For example, Marziali (1984) found that interventions, which focus on the
therapeutic relationship, contribute to the outcome of brief psychotherapy. Marziali
demonstrated a positive association between more favorable outcomes and the frequency
of therapists' interpretations that associated thoughts, behaviors, and/or feelings toward
the therapist.
Foreman and Marmar (1985) reported that psychodynamic therapists were able to
improve the level of alliance by addressing the conflicted in-therapy relationships. In
their study, they found that in cases with improving alliances, one of the more frequent
interventions was therapists' exploration of the client's problematic feelings in relation to
the therapist, and linking the problematic feeling with the therapist to the client's
defenses.
In addition, Kivlighan and Schmitz (1992) looked at counselor technical activity
with improving working alliances and continuing poor-working alliances. They were able
to demonstrate a positive correlation between specific counselor interventions and
improving alliance dyads. They observed that interventions that were more challenging
and thematically focused on the interactions within the relationship (here-and-now) were
found to be more related to the increasingly improving alliance dyads, than with the
continuing poor alliance dyads.
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