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Another limitation is that this study did not investigate therapists' technical
behavior during non-rupture sessions. Although the main goal of this study was to
investigate therapists' technical behavior during ruptures, the exclusion of non-rupture
sessions limits the extent to which certain conclusions can be drawn about the effects of
ruptures on therapists' technical behavior. The failure to assess therapists' adherence in
non-rupture sessions prevents knowing whether BRT therapists' high level of adherence
or CBT therapists' tendency to use a relatively high frequency of treatment proscribed
interventions, reflects a specific response to dealing with ruptures, or a more general
pattern of behavior for the relational and cognitive behavioral therapists throughout the
treatment. This omission, as well as the lack of an adequate sample size, needs to be
corrected in future research.
Conclusions
Findings indicated that while both relational and cognitive behavioral therapists
tended to apply interventions from their treatment manuals with greater frequency,
relational therapists tended to be more adherent to their treatment manual than cognitive
behavioral therapists. Reasons for this may be attributable to differences in training in
relational and cognitive behavioral therapy.
Furthermore, results show that in cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT therapists'
utilization of prescribed and proscribed interventions did not produce any meaningful
effects; the reasons for the null findings may be related to issues associated with
treatment adherence and competence.
In relational therapy, a subset of the findings yielded medium to large effect sizes.
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