Abstract
ObjectivesThe central aim of the research was to verify and determine the strength of the relationships of therapeutic alliance to wellbeing, life satisfaction, and flourishing in patients attending individual psychotherapy. The relationships were assessed based on different sources of information about the quality of the working alliance: patient's evaluation and patient's and psychotherapist's joint evaluations.DesignThe author applied Bordin's pantheoretical model of alliance and two different conceptions of wellbeing, operationalized as hedonistic and eudaimonic.MethodsThe 411 participants included 252 patients and 159 psychotherapists. To test the hypotheses, 16 joint and separate models of structural relations were built and analyzed empirically using SEM. Correlations were analyzed between alliance factors and those of wellbeing, satisfaction, and flourishing.ResultsThe actual impact of working alliance quality on psychological wellbeing proved to be stronger compared to the relations between alliance and satisfaction or flourishing. The results of analyses revealed low, though usually positive and significant, correlations between the dimensions of alliance and those of wellbeing, life satisfaction, and flourishing.ConclusionsThe empirical data and the strategy of analyses brought the expected results, confirming that patient's and psychotherapist's perception of a strong therapeutic alliance is crucial for the optimization of patient's functioning and wellbeing. It turns out that the therapeutic alliance is, above all, a factor of wellbeing understood more deeply than merely as current pleasure. The study also showed that no factor isolated from other components of alliance increased the quality of patient's mental functioning more than others.
Highlights
Previous research has established a belief that psychotherapy is an effective way of treating mental disorders and optimizing individuals’functioning [1,2,3]
In the study testing the relations between the variables, the assessment of therapeutic alliance and wellbeing was based on evaluations collected from 252 psychotherapist–patient dyads
0.03, The results show that the strength the relations between the therapeutic alliance and the explained variables slightly changes depending on who is the source of information about alliance quality
Summary
Previous research has established a belief that psychotherapy is an effective way of treating mental disorders and optimizing individuals’functioning [1,2,3]. Researchers continue to investigate the significance of specific elements of psychotherapy and to identify its active components [8,9,10]—those that allow for achieving positive outcomes, operationalized both with objective indicators (the abatement of symptoms) and with subjective ones (an increase in patient’s wellbeing) [11]. The improvement of overall quality of life is often an implicit or explicit goal of psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, increased positive satisfaction with life or an improvement in wellbeing may be something more than merely a by-product of the alleviation of problems and symptoms: they may be an integral part of the transition from dysfunction to adaptation. It seems important to determine what positive experiences, attitudes, and beliefs— generally, what change in wellbeing—an individual gains thanks to the process of psychotherapy
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