Early interpersonal relations: experience of four treatment methods in phobic women.
One hundred and three phobic women not suitable for insight-oriented psychotherapy were randomized to either therapist-directed prolonged exposure in vivo (PE), supportive therapy of dynamic type (ST), relaxation therapy (R), or basal therapy (B). History taking was lengthy and included ratings of early interpersonal relations. These were combined into a scale with a range from 0, least favourable, to 13 most favourable. The patients filled in an inventory with regard to their experience of the therapist and the therapy at the beginning of the treatment, at midtreatment, and at the end of treatment, 3 months later. This inventory, the ETI, comprises different scales with ranges from least to most favourable experiences. The associations between the scales on the experience of early interpersonal relations and the ETI scales were studied. Most correlations were positive, indicating a similarity between the experience of early personal relations and the experience of the therapist and the therapy. The associations were significant at the start of therapy with B, and at the termination of therapy with R. These results are taken to indicate that when the desire for a personal relation with the therapist is frustrated the nature of the relation is interpreted according to the nature of the early relations. The fact that there was no association in ST indicates that when the patient is helped to express her reactions to current relations there is no need to fall back on early relations for the interpretation of the current ones. The opinion that it is possible to predict the character of the therapeutic relation from the character of early relations was supported.
D000328:Adult; D000379:Agoraphobia / Q000628:therapy; D003887:Desensitization, Psychologic; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010553:Personality Development; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D011614:Psychotherapy, Brief; D012064:Relaxation Therapy