Who gets to talk: Interruptive behaviors in engager and non-engager intake sessions of psychodynamic psychotherapy

Many clients do not return after intake. We speculated that similarities between therapists and clients in terms of interruptive behaviors would predict whether clients returned after intake (engaged). Trained judges coded therapist and client interruptive behaviors (interruptions, overlaps of speec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychotherapy research 2022-09, Vol.32 (7), p.936-950
Main Authors: Preilipper, Sebastian M M, Hill, Clara E, Kivlighan, Jr, Dennis M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Humans
Professional-Patient Relations
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy, Psychodynamic
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Many clients do not return after intake. We speculated that similarities between therapists and clients in terms of interruptive behaviors would predict whether clients returned after intake (engaged). Trained judges coded therapist and client interruptive behaviors (interruptions, overlaps of speech, and sentence completions) for one engager (client returned for at least 10 sessions) and one non-engager (client did not return after intake) adult clients for each of 25 doctoral student therapists in individual psychodynamic psychotherapy. Although all interruptive behaviors were infrequent, clients were most likely to return after intake (engage) when they interrupted at about the same amount as their therapists, overlapped less than their therapists, and completed sentences more than their therapists. Interruptions, sentence completions, and overlaps of speech are types of interruptive behavior that appear to have different relational consequences.
ISSN:1468-4381
DOI:10.1080/10503307.2022.2027042