Premium
Prescriptive relationship levels for juvenile delinquents in a psychotherapy analog
Author(s) -
Edelman Eric,
Goldstein Arnold P.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
aggressive behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.223
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1098-2337
pISSN - 0096-140X
DOI - 10.1002/1098-2337(1984)10:3<269::aid-ab2480100310>3.0.co;2-9
Subject(s) - empathy , psychology , interview , juvenile delinquency , quality (philosophy) , attendance , feeling , clinical psychology , psychotherapist , social psychology , developmental psychology , philosophy , epistemology , political science , law , economics , economic growth
A growing response to evidence suggesting the ineffectiveness of a variety of treatment approaches with juvenile delinquents is a prescriptive intervention strategy. Here the effort is made to tailor aspects of the therapist assigned, the therapeutic relationship, and the treatment itself to an optimal match with receptivity characteristics of the delinquent clients involved. Several clinicians have proposed that productive psychotherapy with such clients must begin with the offering of an impersonal therapist‐client relationship, one less threatening and more attractive to youngsters typically mistrustful of adults and reluctant to explore their own emotional functioning. The present study examined this proposition in a 3 × 4 factorial design crossing three levels of interviewer‐offered empathy and genuineness with four types of delinquent adolescents grouped in terms of Warren's Interpersonal Maturity Level Category system. Dependent measures included four of the criteria typically utilized in research on the quality of initial psychotherapeutic relationships: (1) subject liking for or attraction to the interviewer, (2) subject self‐disclosure to the interviewer, (3) subject‐stated willingness to attend a second interview, and (4) actual subject attendance or nonattendance at a second scheduled interview. With a few exceptions, study results indicated that across quality‐of‐relationship criteria, youngsters in the I‐level categories reflective of mistrust, nonpsychological mindedness, and reluctance to explore feelings were significantly more responsive to Low empathy‐High genuineness interviewers than to interviewers communicating either High empathy‐High genuineness or High empathy‐Low genuineness. These results are seen as standing in firm support of a prescriptive view of psychotherapy in general, and of the particular interviewer communication condition of low empathy combined with high genuineness as an apparently utilitarian prescription for juvenile delinquents in particular.