Interpersonal Complementarity In Counseling And Its Relationship With Working Alliance And Session Outcome

Interpersonal theories divide interpersonal behaviors into two dimensions:affiliation and dominance. Therapy is a special kind of interpersonal interaction, in which counselor and client’s verbal and nonverbal information influence each other. This research introduced the theory of interpersonal complementary to the counseling process-outcome research. Using a new research method—joystick technology, this study explored the interpersonal interactions of counselor and client in different consultation stages, and investigated the influences of complementarity on working alliance and session outcome.Sixteen clients were treated by thirteen counselors(seven novice and six experienced counselors). Three sessions respectively from the early, middle and late phase of every client were selected, totally 48 sessions. Two assistants were recruited to assess the patients’and therapists’ affiliative and dominant behaviors. Working alliance and session outcome questionnaires after every session had been collected in the database.Complementarity was regarded as independent variable, variance analysis of a 2(counselor’s experience:novice vs. experienced)×3(counseling phase:early, middle, & late) mixed design was tested. Regression analysis revealed the relationship of complementarity and working alliance and session outcome. The results are as follows:(1) The joystick method can be used as an effective tool for the assessment of interpersonal interaction. The reliability(CCF) is above 0.5 in affiliation axis, above 0.6 in dominance axis.(2) Under the background of of the client-centered therapy, the interactions between client and counselor were positively correlated in affiliation dimension, and negatively correlated in dominance dimension. The interactions in therapy generally followed the principle of interpersonal complementarity.(3) Counselor experience interacted with consultation stages significantly. For experienced counselors, complementarity presented high-low trend in affiliation axis, whereas it presented low-high trend in dominance dimension along with the development of counseling process. However, complementarity remained the same in different counseling stages for novice counselors.(4) The client’s dominance negatively predicted working alliance, complementarity in dominance dimension positively predicted working alliance.(5) The client’s dominance and affiliation positively predicted the client’s emotional arousal, complementarity negatively predicted the session depth.