The Relationship Inventory (eBook)

A Complete Resource and Guide

Godfrey T. Barrett-Lennard (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-118-79072-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Written by a pioneer in person-centered therapy, this is the only resource to provide full access to the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI) – along with information on the instrument’s history and development and supporting materials for counseling practitioners, researchers, and students.

• Provides a complete instrument for  measuring empathy in relationships, a critical component for success across a wide range of therapeutic interventions
• Charts the development and refinement of the BLRI over more than 50 years, with particular attention to the influence of Carl Rogers’ theories, and outlines the future potential of the instrument
• Contains all the materials necessary for critical understanding and  application of the BRLI, including the full range of forms and adaptations, and guidelines for successful implementation
• Also presents the author’s Contextual Selves Inventory (CSI), which permits direct study of the self as distinctively experienced in different relationship contexts

Godfrey T. Barrett-Lennard is Adjunct Professor in the School of Health Professions and the School of Psychology & Exercise Science at Murdoch University, Australia. He is Honorary Doctor of Murdoch University and Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Australian Psychological Society. He studied with Carl Rogers at the University of Chicago and his research has focused on relationship in therapy and life systems. He is the author of many books, chapters, articles, and research questionnaire instruments. His most recent publications include The Relationship Paradigm: Human Being Beyond Individualism (2013), Relationship at the Centre: Healing in a Troubled World (Wiley, 2005), Steps on a Mindful Journey: Person-centred Expressions(2003), and Carl Rogers’ Helping System: Journey and Substance (1998). He has given addresses and workshops around the world, and in 2011 he was presented with the Carl Rogers Award of APA Division 32 (Society for Humanistic Psychology).

Inhalt

Preface vii

About the Companion Website ix

Part 1 The Relationship Inventory: Beginning, Fruition, Future 1

1 How Change Happens: The Guidance and Refinement of Theory 3

2 The Classic Investigation of Carl Rogers' Core Theory 8

Definitions of the "therapeutic" variables 10

Instruments and procedure 12

Experimental hypotheses 16

Results 17

Implications and further research 22

Conclusion 24

3 A Major Revision: Crafting the 64-item RI and Emergent Adaptations 26

Purposes of the revision 27

Item analysis and other features 27

The spread of application with varied adaptations 31

Conclusion 34

4 Mature and Travelling: The RI "System" in Focus 35

The theoretical structure of the BLRI reviewed 35

Phases in dialogue exchange linking to the main inventory forms 38

Gathering, scoring, and using RI data: Practice and rationale 39

Reliability and validity: Issues and evidence 43

New and underused applications of the BLRI 46

Conclusion 48

5 The BLRI Story Extended: Later Work and Looking Ahead 49

Reflections on theory and the interrelation of conditions 50

Later studies and analyses 52

Where to next? Underexplored and adventurous regions 60

The spectrum of BL relationship inventories 61

Conclusion 63

6 Training Applications: Exercises in Facilitation 64

Use of the whole BLRI early in counsellor training 64

Learning from interviews in triads with BLRI-derived participant ratings 65

Conclusion 71

Part 2 The Journeying Self in Personal and Group Relations 73

7 The Contextual Selves Inventory: For the Study of Self in its Diversity 75

Origins and manifestations of self-diversity 76

Constructive change in relations within the plural self 78

Studying the self in context - new focus and method 78

The CSI poised for fresh inquiry 83

Conclusion 83

8 Tracking Self and Relational Process in Experiential Groups 85

End-of-meeting participant process appraisals 86

Illustrative results from use of the in-group questionnaires 87

Conclusion 89

Part 3 Reframing: Envisioning the Path Ahead 91

9 Looking Ahead: Fresh Horizons in Relationship Study 93

Invitations to connected further study of relationship 93

Towards the study of relations between very large systems 96

Conclusion 98

Appendix 1: The Relationship Inventory Forms and Scoring Keys 99

Appendix 2: Contextual Selves Inventory and Triad and Group Rating Forms 160

References 175

Index 184

Textauszug

Chapter 2
The Classic Investigation of Carl Rogers’ Core Theory

Rogers’ bold formulation of the basic conditions for therapeutic change (Rogers, 1957) was an absorbing challenge to me, as soon as I saw it, which was several months before publication. However, just how to put it to the test was not at all clear. For one thing there were no existing instruments to measure the variables of the experienced therapist–client response and relationship. Assuming I was able to develop such an instrument there was the challenge of obtaining all the necessary data from an adequate sample of actual in-therapy clients and their therapists. Additionally, the method and data analysis would need to be done in a way that gave reasonable assurance that an equation linking relationship and change was working in a particular direction, that is, that measured change was resulting (substantially) from the qualities of experienced therapist response. All of this was a very tall order and nearly foundered at the start because of the difficulties in accessing the necessary data. However, Rogers’ Counselling Centre was a supportive environment deeply involved in therapy research with a continuing flow of clients and, finally, the way was clear for the study to go ahead. After my dissertation report was complete and I went on to career teaching I was able to get grant support and extend the analysis to include the relationship data from therapists as well as clients and organize a complete report for publication – in Psychological Monographs (Barrett-Lennard, 1962).

The monograph report was originally chosen for republication in the 1970s book New directions in client-centred therapy, edited by Tomlinson and Hart, but then dropped by the publishers as an economy measure (ill-judged, given the burgeoning interest). In any case, that omission adds to the relevance of the account here. This chapter is devoted to the substance of that report. Its retelling is a critical part of the larger story of development and enquiry, which is the focus in this book. Specific knowledge of the beginning and main turning points of this story contribute to critical understanding of what it led on to, as well as to the meaning of measures generated by the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory. Readers interested in the full data analysis and results from the foundation study can write to me requesting it or (better) track down a library copy of my original monograph report, which is long out of print. It has been an extremely interesting exercise for me to come back to this work in a closely studied way after so long, and I hope the reader will sense and share some of the excitement. I think that I have learned to write better and what follows is more readable than the original as well as literally half its length – though still comprehensive in scope. 1

When this study began, some 15 years of research analyses of recorded interviews and other data had already been devoted to identifying process features and mapping both the unfolding course and the outcomes of client-centered therapy (Cartwright, 1957; Rogers & Dymond, 1954). There was plenty of room for further study of the orderly characteristics of the therapy process and components of personal change, but that such change did tend to occur was, by then, supported by significant research evidence. Related further work was concerned with sorting out the various dimensions and facets of observed change and advancing the methodology of investigating change (Cartwright, Kirtner, & Fiske, 1963) and also with refined inductive and deductive analysis of the interview therapy process (e.g., Braaten, 1961; Vargas, 1954). Then, the watershed theoretical advance by Rogers (1957) opened a new doorway onto the issue of the factors in therapy that brought about change. In tandem with this momentous development another new envisioning occurred that was taken up in subsequent studies. This was Rogers’ “process” conception, which provided a fresh differentiation and means of measuring changes in personality functioning during therapy (Rogers, 1958; Rogers, 1959a; Rogers with Gendlin, Kiesler, & Truax, 1967; Walker, Rablen, & Rogers, 1960). These were heady days in the milieu that triggered and fostered this research.

A few earlier studies by client-centered investigators had indirectly provided some empirical evidence about how or “why” change occurs in therapy. In their related studies Fiedler (1950) and Quinn (1950) found that expert therapists of differing theoretical orientations shared capacities for understanding and effective communication (assessed by judges from therapy interview data) to a higher degree than nonexperts. Lipkin (1954) found a positive association between the degree to which clients felt liked by their therapists and their improvement in adjustment (assessed from Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) data). This perceived liking may have helped to release a fruitful change process or been associated with additional factors that directly facilitated therapeutic change. The paucity of previous research focused on explaining change was due partly to: the inherent order in which scientific knowledge tends to develop (studying “causal” relationships is a relatively advanced stage); the difficulty of studying such associations in a process not subject to experimental manipulation; and the result of the previous lack of a systematic theory of the basic conditions producing therapeutic change. Now, however, the time was ripe to begin this level of systematic study.

Rogers’ theory (1957) of the ‘conditions of therapeutic personality change’ at once triggered not one but two independent studies aimed to test its main features. The other study, conducted by Halkides (1958), investigated the theory essentially in the form in which Rogers presented it, except for the addition of a further relationship variable that she felt was implied in his conception. She employed therapy interview data from 20 sound-recorded cases, and extracted short randomly selected conversation units from two interviews in each case. These units were rated by three judges for their degree of unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, and congruence or genuineness of the therapist (all postulated by Rogers), and also for the degree to which the affective intensity of the therapist’s communication matched that of his/her client. The client sample was divided into subgroups of more successful and less successful cases, using a criterion derived from several change and outcome measures. Halkides found significant associations between the criterion of success and all the relationship variables except for affective intensity matching (where the results were ambiguous). Although Halkides’ study was not directly followed up or published it encouraged the development and use of broadly similar judge rating scales by Truax and others in the Wisconsin research on psychotherapy with hospitalized schizophrenic patients (see Rogers et al, 1967).

This study is quite distinct from Halkides’ work in its methodology and specific theoretical underpinning. It hinged on the view that the client’s experience of the therapist’s response is the immediate locus of therapeutic influence in their relationship. This was a change in emphasis from Rogers’ formally stated viewpoint (Rogers, 1957), which proposed that it is first of all necessary that the therapist experience certain things in relation to her/his client (for example, unconditional positive regard) and, second, that s/he communicate these crucial aspects of response to the client. The present investigator’s conception took, as its starting point, the presumption that it is what the client experiences that affects him or her directly and would thus be most crucially related to the outcome of therapy.

Viewing the client’s experience-based perceptions in the therapy relationship as the direct agent of therapeutic change leads to the further question of what generates those perceptions. The answer conceived at the time was that a client’s perceptions result from the interaction of his/her personality characteristics and attributes of the therapist’s experience and communication in the relationship. In the hypothetical case of two clients with identical characteristics, the differential response of the therapists would be wholly responsible for the different perceptions of the clients and, hence (in theory), for differences in therapy outcome. From this view it was relevant to study and measure the five variables of therapist response, firstly (and most importantly) from the client’s frame of reference and, secondly, from the therapist’s own standpoint. To do this the ‘Relationship Inventory’ questionnaire, designed to yield measures of each variable from either client or therapist perceptions, was developed.

Specifically, it was postulated that each of five distinguishable features of the therapist’s attitudes and relational response are influential in the process of therapeutic change. These are the therapist’s level of regard for the client and (as a separate factor) the extent to which this regard is unconditional or unqualified, and the degree of the therapist’s empathic understanding and congruence and willingness to be known by the client. The resulting questionnaire instrument was administered to client and therapist participants at up to four points during...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.3.2015
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Psychiatrie / Psychotherapie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: <p>BLRI, BLCSI, Contextual Selves Inventory, therapeutic relationships, Carl Rogers, empathy, counseling, CBT, psychotherapy, humanistic psychology, person-centred therapy</p> • Psychologie • Psychology • Psychotherapie • Psychotherapie u. Beratung • Psychotherapy & Counseling
• ISBN-10: 1-118-79072-3 / 1118790723
• ISBN-13: 978-1-118-79072-4 / 9781118790724