Marianne Welmers

Therapists’ Contributions to the Alliance 67 CHAPTER 3 competitive responding in poor alliance sessions. Competitive responding reflects two speakers’ opposing views on who is in control in their relationship, resulting for example in not answering a question or interrupting the other speaker when he or she changes the conversation topic (Muñiz de la Peña et al., 2012). In the same study, cases with improved alliances showed a decrease in the therapist’s competitive responding. Although both of these studies concerned family therapy, the studies did lack a systemic focus on the alliance, as they examined individual alliances with adolescents only. Two other observational family therapy case studies examining alliances with the family describehowalliances improvedwhen the therapist (a) explaineda rationale for introducing new goals and tasks, (b) fostered emotional bonds with each family member, for example by reassuring and empathizing, (c) focused on family members’ shared experiences and agreed upon goals, and (d) highly invested in family members’ sense of safety during sessions (Escudero et al., 2012; Friedlander et al., 2014). Although providing valuable insight into good practices of alliance building and repairing in the context of family therapy, both case studies did not provide a statistical test of the association between alliance building behaviors and the alliance. Consequently, the effect of therapists’ observed behaviors on alliances in family therapy remains unclear. Personality and Clinical Experience Besides observable therapists’ behaviors, relatively stable individual characteristics of the therapist might influence alliance processes. Two reviews of studies on therapists’ contributions to the alliance in individual psychotherapy indicated that warmth, trustworthiness, flexibility, being interested, alert, relaxed, confident and respectful, are therapist characteristicsassociatedwithastronger alliance (Ackerman&Hilsenroth, 2003), whereas being rigid, aloof, tense, uncertain, self-focused, and critical are associated with poorer alliances (Ackerman & Hilsenroth, 2001). However, few studies comprehensively examined associations between therapists’ stable individual (personality) characteristics and alliance, while to our knowledge, no such studies exist for conjoint family treatment. A well validated model that can be used to describe the therapist’s personality characteristics, is The Five Factor Personality Model (McCrae, & Costa, 1987; Chapman et al., 2009). This model distinguishes between neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness , and conscientiousness as five basic personality domains (McCrae, &Costa, 1987). Neuroticism is likely to negatively impact the therapist’s ability to build strong alliances, as it refers to emotional instability and anxiety, lacking confidence, and being tense rather than relaxed (Hoekstra & De Fruyt, 2014). Neuroticism has been shown to negatively impact job performance more generally (Lado, & Alonso, 2017), as well as the quality of intimate and social relationships (e.g. Karney, & Benjamin, 1995;