ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the details of the interaction between professional helpers and their clients. It argues that analysis of process needs to be linked to analysis of outcome if it is to serve any significant purpose in increasing knowledge of how to help the client. The chapter highlights its similarities to the ‘behaviour’ aspects outlined as the middle stage of self-fulfilling prophecies identified in experimenter influence, placebo effects and ‘psychotherapy’ research. G. W. Allport suggested in his example of the self-fulfilling prophecy that ‘expectations seek out their own reinforcement’ and that once the chain of expectations leading to behaviour, which reinforces that expectation, is set in motion it continues in a system of reinforcing feedback loops. The therapist attempts to clarify, evaluate, and modify the patient’s belief systems and to co-ordinate these cognitive changes with modifications in the patient’s emotional and behavioural response system.
