ABSTRACT
A patient's unmet needs, schemas, coping behaviors, and modes are often present in the therapy relationship, and the assessment process therefore includes considerable attention to the therapy relationship as a source of information. Schemas, by their nature, produce characteristic behaviors across situations and relationships. For example, an individual with a strong Approval-seeking schema will come into a new situation with heightened awareness of the other person's reaction to her. Another patient with an Entitlement schema will enter any relationship with jarring demands for his partner. These characteristic behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns have a high chance of being triggered during the assessment phase: the personal nature of the therapist's questions, along with the uncertainty and novelty that are common in early stages of therapy, naturally ``provide'' many opportunities for such triggering.
