ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to see whether traditional psychotherapy research has looked to the field of infant development to help understand the processes involved in the early care-seeking/care-giving relationships in order to elucidate care-seeking/care-giving behaviours in adult life. It begins with the work of the Chicago school of psychotherapy research. The chapter examines the work of R. R. Carkhuff and B. G. Berenson who represent a more counselling tradition. It looks at the work of Lester Luborsky who comes from a psychoanalytic background. On the whole psychotherapy is a private treatment paid for out of personal income. He has taken the concept of transference and developed ways of exploring its manifestation and resolution in the therapeutic process. His work is aimed at testing hypotheses that inform his clinical diagnosis and intervention. The theoretical framework informing the research is steeped in an object relations interactional model of personality development.
