Marianne Welmers

Alliance Discrepancies 93 CHAPTER 4 2015). This could also be the case in family treatment, leading to an underestimation of alliance discrepancies by the therapist. Furthermore, the most overt indicator of the strength of the alliance for a therapist is behavior of family members during sessions. In family treatment, however, family members observe each other in their interactions with the therapist, which might cause feelings of shame and a reluctance to display inner thoughts and feelings (Friedlander et al., 2006). This was illustrated in a small- scale study on within-family differences in the emotional bond with the therapist. In this study, discrepancies in the emotional bond with the therapist were reported by clients as well as by observers, but the discrepancies were largest for self-reports, indicating that clients’ observed interactions with the therapist only partially mirrored their self- reports (Muñiz de la Peña, Friedlander, & Escudero, 2009). A second aspect of therapists’ evaluations of alliances is the extent to which their perspective is congruent with family members’ perspectives on the alliance. Studies of adult and youth psychotherapy indicate that congruence between therapist and client alliance evaluations leads to more favorable treatment outcomes (Bachelor, 2013; Fjermestad et al., 2016; Kivlighan, 2007; Rozmarin et al., 2008; Zilcha-Mano et al., 2017). In family treatment, monitoring the alliance with less involved family members might be more difficult than monitoring the alliance with highly involved family members. This may result in differences between family members in the extent to which the therapist and a family member agree upon their alliance. As we argued above, parents most often initiate treatment and mothers are generally more involved in child rearing matters as compared to fathers. Therapists might therefore be primarily focused on the alliance with parents (especially mothers) instead of youths, and subsequently be more congruent in their evaluation of the alliance with parents (especially mothers) than with youths. Present study The aim of the present study was to gain insight regarding alliance discrepancies and the therapist’s evaluation of multiple alliances and discrepancies in family treatment. Our first research question was: do discrepancies between alliances of different family members in family treatment occur, and how do they develop over the course of treatment? Based on the reviewed literature we formulated the following hypotheses: (1) there are significant discrepancies in the strength of the alliance between family members, more specifically: parents have stronger alliances with the therapist as compared to youths, and mothers have stronger alliances with the therapist as compared to fathers; and (2) discrepancies in alliance decrease over the course of treatment.