Marianne Welmers

Chapter 4 92 Alliance Discrepancies in Family Treatment A first objective of this study was to investigate if discrepancies between alliances of different family members with the therapist occurred, and how they developed over the course of family treatment. Given differences between family members and their role during treatment, discrepancies in alliance might be expected to be the rule rather than the exception. For example, in family treatment parents are most often the initiating party for treatment, and children or adolescents do not always participate voluntarily (Friedlander et al., 2019; Shirk, Caporino, & Karver, 2010). This might negatively affect the alliance between therapists and youths, as was illustrated in a study on family therapy by Robbins et al. (2006). In this study, mothers had significantly stronger alliances with the therapist than their sons. Furthermore, similar to many other cultures, mothers in the Netherlands are in general more involved in child rearing as compared to fathers (Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau, 2018), and prior research has indicated that youth and care professionals consult or involve mothers more often than fathers in matters concerning their children (Hoogeveen, 2018). Therefore, in family treatment therapists might form stronger alliances with mothers as compared to fathers. Althoughalliancediscrepanciesare likely tooccur during family treatment, theextent towhich alliances are discrepant is likely to vary during the treatment process. Several studies have shown that the strength of the alliance changes during treatment (Ardito & Rabellino, 2011; Horvath, 2006; Karver, &Carporino, 2010;Weisset al., 2014). Subsequently, theextent towhich alliances of different family members are discrepant might also change during treatment. Ideally, as the treatment processevolves, the therapist attempts tobalancedifferent alliances and improve weak alliances, resulting in a decrease of alliance discrepancies. Therapist’s evaluation of alliances in family treatment A second objective of this study was to investigate the therapist’s perspective onmultiple alliances and their discrepancies in family treatment. As the therapist is expected to play a key role in improving alliance processes, it is important that he or she be able to assess and monitor alliances during family treatment. However, the therapist’s perception of alliances may not always be accurate due to personal involvement with the family and be biased by strong personal reactions to family members (Muñiz de la Peña, Friedlander, & Escudero, 2009). In this study, we highlighted two particular aspects of the therapist’s perspective on alliances in family treatment. A first aspect is the correct evaluation of alliance discrepancies by the therapist in order to repair problematic alliance discrepancies. A study in which therapist reports of the alliance were compared with client self-reports showed that therapists systematically overestimated weak alliances and underestimated strong alliances (Hartmann et al.,