ABSTRACT
Formal verbal characteristics of the therapeutic process, such as duration of utterances, number of adjectives used, and the like, can be measured objectively, but content analysis is dependent upon more easily biased judgments. A considerable amount of work has been done on verbal conditioning, and efforts have been made to extend it directly to the interview situation with psychiatric patients. The crucial question for psychotherapy is whether altered verbalization generalizes to bring about more fundamental change. Various investigators have focused on the effect of formal characteristics of the therapist's verbalizations upon aspects of patient responsively and upon the patient-therapist verbal interaction process. Therapist acceptance and empathy were associated with patient discrimination learnings. Agreement was higher within the analyst-trainee group when the information furnished was limited to the therapist responses. Progressive movement was found to be associated with therapist responses that were "slightly deeper than pure reflection."
