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This article focuses on the book "Psychotherapy of the Adolescent," by Benjamin H. Balser. This is a collection of papers and interpretations on the treatment of adolescents at different levels of psychiatric practice with special emphasis on the role of the school.

The paper offers a case study with a defective delinquent who was rehabilitated through intensive individual psychotherapy. The subject was selected by the staff of a large colony for male defectives as belonging to the group of "incorrigible" defective delinquents. The procedure of selection and the results of a large scale counseling and psychotherapy program have been described elsewhere. One to three therapeutic sessions of 20-50 minutes each were held weekly for 18 months except for vacation.

The article informs that the selection and validation of criteria to measure psychotherapeutic experience are important problems in current research. In an increasing number of studies the utility of psychological tests as guides to selection of suitable patients for psychotherapy is being investigated. Although the validation of such tests rests, to a large degree, upon the adequate measurement of the success or failure of the patient's therapeutic experience, insufficient research has been directed towards this area. The present paper reports on an empirical investigation of the relationship between the manner in which therapy is terminated and length of treatment and training and experience of the therapist.

The article reports that in the field of psychotherapy, there has been practically no progress in the matter of evaluating the relative efficacy of various methods because of failure to quantify the nature and malignancy of the clinical case materials under study. Adherents of various schools of psychotherapy have made a large number of claims and counter claims which cannot be proved or disproved until the exact nature of the clinical material on which the findings are based has been established. It is the purpose of this paper to outline a method for quantifying the malignancy of case materials by the use of a rating scale which has been called the prognostic index.

This article discusses directive psychotherapy. The purpose of, this paper is to discuss the nature, indications and contraindications of methods of therapy involving pressure or coercion. Pressure is defined as the bringing to bear upon the client of stimulation tending to direct action toward specific goals. Coercion involves restraint or regulation by force, usually by law or authority, compelling or constraining the! client to comply with directions. Pressure will usually involve influences which leave ultimate responsibility for conformance up to the client himself, while coercion requires mandatory conformance.

The article presents information on the patient as a constant in psychotherapy. It demonstrates a procedure which enables certain aspects of the psychotherapeutic process to be held constant by using a highly resistant patient. Experimental studies of characteristics of therapists and observers are then possible. In terms of this study, each therapist had his own style and method which was little influenced by conscious attempts to standardize technique. There were individual differences in regard to the degree to which a therapist could alter his approach to the patient. Some tried hard to return occasionally to the agreed upon approach. Others acted as if there never had been any discussion or agreement on the subject.

The article attempts to demonstrate the un-spontaneous basis for what heretofore has been termed "spontaneous" remission. Evidence is presented that a combination of favorable patient expectancies and such nonspecific professional intervention as the intake interview and psychological testing are sufficient for inducing symptomatic change in individuals waiting to participate in formal psychotherapy. Finally, it is suggested that "non-specific therapy remission" be substituted for "spontaneous remission" as a means of describing improvement in wait-list patients not participating in formal psychotherapy.

The article describes the application of a scale for the objective assessment of process or movement in psychotherapy and reports the degree of reliability and validity found in a preliminary investigation. The present scale represents a refinement of the original scale based upon further analysis and study of additional therapy protocols. It seems apparent that satisfactory interjudge reliability can be obtained in using the process scale in its present form, and that ratings derived from it bear a meaningful relationship to other measures of successful change in therapy.

The article compares a group of 82 post-poliomyelitic subjects on the Rosenzweig P-F Study with Rosenzweig's normative group. Some differences between the post-poliomyelitic group and the Rosenzweig normative group were found at statistically significant levels which at best indicate trends because of the size of the sample. When the postapoliomyelitic male is compared with Rosenzweig's normative group he may be described as one who is less Extrapunitive, more Intropunitive and more Impunitive than the male of the normative group.

This article focuses on group structures in group psychotherapy. The group psychotherapy programs used in these hospitals, as in most contemporary programs, did not start by placing patients in already existing groups, e.g., a family or a club. At the onset there existed only an assemblage of patients, brought together by their doctors' orders and held together by ward attendants and the confines of the room. During the first session, some patients read, some sat listlessly with eyes wandering aimlessly about the room, while others buried their heads in their arms.

The article highlights the degree of negative transference occurring in group psychotherapy and client outcome in juvenile delinquents. The results suggest that the occurrence of negative transference in group psychotherapy with juvenile delinquents is associated with positive therapeutic benefit. Further, the degree of occurrence of negative transference in juvenile delinquents had no differential effects whether the therapist was high or low in empathy, warmth, or genuineness. Moreover, it is to at least some degree the therapist who is more open, non-defensive, real or genuine who facilitates the expression of negative transference. Juvenile delinquents typically have difficulty in relating to authority figures.

The article focuses on a behavioral approach to the group treatment of depressed persons or patients with mental depression. In this study preliminary results of a behaviorally oriented approach to the group treatment of depressed individuals are presented. The approach emphasizes lack of "social skill" as an important antecedent condition for occurrence of depressive behaviors and makes use of the group and of the behavior of the patients in the group to produce behavioral changes in the direction of increased social skill.

The article reports on the behavior therapy and target symptoms of the patients. This study describes three cases treated by behavior therapy, where treatment aimed at the target symptom also brought about other changes, which had seemed unrelated to the presenting symptom. The remarkable aspect of the whole treatment procedure is that the patient has lost all interest in homosexual and transvestite activities, although no specific treatment was directed towards his sexual deviations. The patient himself was even more grateful for the disappearance of his sexual perversions than for his recovery from the traffic phobia.

The article investigates the feelings of therapists in the therapeutic process. This study was concerned with what therapists typically feel in psychotherapy sessions, what the structure of these feelings was, and how these feeling clusters were related to the patient's experience. In general, salient therapist feelings were role-syntonic. There were nine dimensions of therapist affective experience and some of these were related to patient experiences. The value of these relationships as practical cues and for a greater understanding of psychotherapy process are discussed.

The article cites a study that evaluates the nature of therapeutic change by using correlation and factor analysis of several measures of change which reflected different levels and areas of personality functioning. This study used the method to examine the nature of change in successfully treated adolescent delinquent boys. The success of the psychotherapeutic program for adolescent delinquent boys was shown by significant changes in all three areas investigated--overt behavior, personality attitudes, and achievement test performance. In evaluating personality attitudes, three areas in which the boys were believed to have special problems were sampled--attitude toward authority, control of aggression, and self image.

This article describes, and attempts a preliminary assessment of, a new approach to the treatment of underachieving adolescent boys who resist needed psychotherapy. It would appear most economical to briefly describe the remedial clinic setting in which this investigation took place, and then to proceed to a consideration of method and results. The Clinic School, established in 1921, on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, is a remedial center providing facilities for: the diagnostic psychological assessment of children with severe learning disorders, the treatment of a limited number of such children, either in the full-day remedial school program or in the part-time tutoring program, and training and research.

The article evaluates the relationship of therapists' ratings of patients to duration of stay in therapy, and appraises the effect of clinical experience on these relationships. Fifteen rated variables were utilized and compared with duration of stay in outpatient psychotherapy. The most striking finding of this study is the moderate to high reliability of ratings of experienced judges on therapeutic assets of therapy candidates and the failure of these judgments to relate to actual duration of stay in psychotherapy.

The article attempts to set up models of therapeutic situations in which analogues to several different therapeutic approaches might be examined. For example, if the patient and therapist concentrate on the environment, the nature of the environment, the forces at work in the environment, and other general environmental factors, it can be seen that particular therapeutic approach is quite similar to the approach classically practiced by the social or guidance worker. The study suggests that the categories of response concern primarily with the environment, the subject, and the examiner can be rated reliably and offer a potential tool for further research in the area of psychotherapy.

This article reports on a homosexual who was treated with rational psychotherapy. The client was a thirty-five year old male, living in Brooklyn with his parents, and operating his disabled father's toy factory. He had been raised as a Catholic, but no longer considered himself a believer. He was the only son of what he described as a "very religious and very neurotic" mother and an "exceptionally weak, dome mated father" who had been disabled by a serious stroke two years before the client came for treatment. He had always been quite close to his mother, and usually did her bidding, even though he bitterly resented her persistent attempts to control himself and his father.

This article discusses outcome of employing three techniques of psychotherapy. Since it has been the writer's custom, for the last several years, to keep summary records on all clients seen, including information relating to diagnosis, number of sessions, and therapeutic outcome, 78 closed cases were taken from the therapist's files, consisting of individuals who had been treated for at least ten sessions with rational analysis. These were matched with 78 cases of individuals who had been treated for at least ten sessions with psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy.

This article focuses on social class and the acceptance of psychotherapy. The patient source was the Out-patient Department of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, a training institution and community clinic offering various types of psychotherapy. A total of 57 patients who met the qualifications specified below were included in the study. All patients were between the age of 18 and 55 years and their diagnoses were either psychoneurosis or some form of personality disorder. Specifically excluded were patients with a diagnosis of organic brain disease, anti-social character disorder, alcoholism, overt psychosis, or mental deficiency.

The article discusses a methodology for measuring personality changes in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy has existed and flourished during the past five decades in spite of the fact that it remains almost completely unvalidated by scientific standards. Psychotherapy is, in some respects, an implausible procedure offering to the individual the opportunity to learn those things about himself which by definition he does not wish to know. The methodology for measuring changes before and after psychotherapy is based on the Interpersonal System. This system involving a complex combination of formal and empirical operations has been described elsewhere.

The article focuses on common factors of the patient-therapist relationship in diverse psychotherapies. No topic in psychology today occupies a place of greater prominence than psychotherapy. Yet the subject is perhaps more replete with confusion and contradiction than any other in psychology. Neither layman nor therapist can hope to discover in the volumes written on the subject arty very accurate picture of what most psychotherapy really consists of. The problem of adequate criteria hampers those who desire to investigate therapeutic successes and failures.

The article reports that special problems do arise in psychotherapy, one of which, for example, relates to the independent-variable complex. Either it is true that more variables interact in individual therapeutic treatment than is customary in experimental psychology, or that we are at present unable to specify the independent variables which account for response to treatment. Thus a study of psychotherapy cannot rule out a host of disturbing variables in order to concentrate on the significance of one or two. There is no prospect of rising to the level of the rat psychologist's control, where he gets rid of a great deal of genetic variability, for example, by drawing his animals from one purified strain. One of our concerns will be to state how, if at all, such special problems modify the use of formal design in research on therapy.

The article reports that studies of the effectiveness of counseling and psychotherapy have used a variety of criteria as measures of success. Some researches have employed rating scales of differing degrees of elegance, others have relied upon psychological tests, while still others have emphasized physiological and environmental measurements. The behavior measured in such studies was sometimes quite specific, as changes in respiration or pulse rates, and sometimes very broad and elusive such as changes in sell concept. The therapeutic methods employed ranged from directive through eclectic and nondirective procedures. In every case the attempt was made in the approaches discussed here to measure the clients' status before therapy, after therapy, and in some studies, during therapy.

The article reports that before dealing critically with the present status of research in this field we may consider briefly certain of the difficulties facing a research worker in this area. The most obvious source of difficulty is the presence of various systematic approaches to psychotherapy psychoanalytic, nondirective and so on. Each of these points of view may become proliferated by defections from the ranks. In addition, there are the minor unorthodoxies and individual idiosyncracies within the fold which still further complicate the issue. One cannot speak of the "effects of psychotherapy" in a bald unqualified fashion, but research must be framed in terms of a particular approach to psychotherapy with attention to the particular individual nuances given by the specific practioners concerned.

This article focuses on the training clinical psychologists in psychotherapy. It seems that a training program in therapy for psychologists must accept the premise that psychotherapy can be treated as a discipline in its own right, that it need not be viewed as necessarily an adjurict of medical training. Furthermore, the training program must recognize that while its existence as a stopgap or expediency measure can be justified by the present critical shortage of psychiatrists, any long-range, inherent justification can result only if the psychologist-therapist is prepared to make a unique contribution to the field of therapy, if he can complement the work of the psychiatrist rather than be his professional competitor.

This article discusses directive psychotherapy. Animal experiments have demonstrated that a breakdown in the individuals ability to utilize past experience and to differentiate between stimuli typically results in the development of neurotic behavior of various types. Similarly, human inability to solve problem situations on the basis of previous knowledge results in frustration and maladjustive behavior. In this situation, emotional instability is a secondary phenomena occurring as a reaction to failure to solve problems with intellectual resources.

The article presents information on a critique of the theoretical contributions of non-directive therapy. Although non-directive therapists may have only recently rediscovered this point, it has been basic to virtually every other major kind of therapy for many decades. This an excellent statement of an important aspect of the dynamics of psychotherapy; the one serious flaw being that the term "client-centered therapy" is meant only to include "non-directive" therapy; and the implication being that all other kinds of therapy are non-client-centered and directive.

This article focuses on directive psychotherapy. While the limitations of explicit meaning have been pointed out frequently, occasionally people still mean, know, intend, and attend what they say. Not to take communication at its face value may lead to clinical failure as well as success. A common therapeutic error, particularly among analytically-oriented clinicians, is to place such concentration upon overtones, such obvious speculation concerning motives, that he seems pre-occupied and inattentive; he fails to deal adequately, i.e., logically.

The article presents information on a study that examines the criteria of progress in counseling and psychotherapy. The criteria that have been employed are as follows: (1) Non-return for treatment, (2) non-return for treatment plus evidence of vocational adjustment, (3) cessation or reduction of symptoms, (4) patients' own feelings, expressed during and after treatment, that they had been helped by the therapy and, (5) evidence of adjustment to life. It was concluded that there is a need of more adequate criteria and their measurement.

The article presents information on directive psychotherapy. Holistic viewpoints in psychological science stress the importance of evaluating the organism as a whole with proper emphasis on the interaction of constitutional and acquired factors in development. This study is concerned with the attempt to outline a system of constitutional analysis to permit the objective evaluation of the biological adequacy of the organism as a scientific basis for rational diagnosis and therapy.

The article considers methods, indications and contraindications for making available psychological information in directive counseling and psychotherapy. The therapeutic efficacy of directive methods is limited by the same factors of clinical experience and judgment, which determine the therapeutic outcome of nondirective methods. One of the functions of the psychologist in counseling normal people is to impart reliable scientific in formation concerning the psychology of adjustment. It was found that irrespective of the causes for their maladjustment, most normal persons are able to utilize psychological information in making better adjustment to life.

The article outlines some theoretical and practical considerations concerning the use of palliative methods in psychotherapy. The general purpose of palliation is to reduce the severity or otherwise alleviate the client's complaints or symptoms, affording relief but not cure, and thereby facilitating normal reparative processes by providing optimum conditions for cure. Palliative methods are indicated in (a) major crises in adjustment where emotional instability or other distressing symptoms require immediate action to tide the client over his climax of troubles, (b) transient periods of instability where maladjustment is a direct reaction to environmental stress and the client is basically normal and healthy, (c) situations impossible of satisfactory solution, and (d) for the treatment and relief of distressing symptoms which must be attended to before more basic therapy can be effectively attempted.

The article focuses on non-directive psychotherapy, which is entirely new conception of the dynamics of psychotherapy. It does not rest upon the old conceptions that the counselor must secure enough information about the client to interpret the client to himself and finally force this interpretation upon the client in such a way that the client accepts this interpretation and acts upon it. Therapy is effected in a non-directive relationship by placing the client in an accepting environment, in a situation where he is permitted to make the beginnings of a new and better adjustment and it is from this seedling adjustment that his latter total readjustment eventuates. Hence, this theory of the dynamics of psychotherapy constitutes a definitely new system, not merely a new method of psychotherapy.

This article focuses on directive psychotherapy. In terms of psychotherapy, reassurance means to restore confidence in another by assuring him of certain facts which were previously uncertain or unknown to him. The art of reassurance has been so extensively practiced by physicians, clergymen, teachers, friends and relatives that it hardly deserves designation as a special technique in guidance unless it is so skillfully utilized as to go beyond ordinary common sense. Historically, reassurance is one of the oldest psychotherapeutic methods, since men have attempted to reassure each other since time immemorial.

This article focuses on non-directive psychotherapy. While in the beginning or initial contact the structuring is verbal, the most significant aspect of this process is the subtle experiencing by the client of the counselor's permissiveness and complete acceptance. He experiences too the limits of the situation and of the relationship. As he is able to accept and assimilate these limits, he experiences growth in independence and ability to follow through in his role as a responsible participant in the counseling.

The article discusses a study of factors related to length of stay in psychotherapy. A previous investigation revealed that the patients applying for treatment in the Mental Hygiene Clinic of the New York Regional Office are representative of the veteran population in the greater New York area for most demographic characteristics. However, assignment to psychotherapy was found to be related to normative data indicative of high socio-economic status, intrapyschic complaints, youth, and expressed desire for psychotherapy, recommendations from psychological test evaluation and previous treatment. The present investigation is designed to determine whether the above and other demographic criteria for assignment are related to length of stay in psychotherapy or in psychosomatic treatment.

This article discusses resistance and difficulties in psychotherapy of mental retardates. In the first place, since psychotherapy is largely based on verbal communication, it has been felt that with limited verbal understanding, especially at the interpretative level, no effective results can be achieved; the mental retardate would not understand what the score is, so that a change in his attitudes and his handling of his impulses could not be carried out. Psychotherapeutic specialties, particularly non-directive counseling and psychoanalysis, have reinforced the notion that the retarded, at least below the dull normal level, is not capable of profiting from techniques of reeducation and character change.

The article discusses the effect of verbal conditioning of emotional words on recognition of threatening stimuli. In line with previous work in which the verbal conditioning of emotional words had been found to have a beneficial effect on hospitalized psychiatric subjects' behavior in group therapy, it was hypothesized that verbal conditioning of emotional words would be associated with reduced defense scores. Of primary importance to psychologists studying psychotherapy is that their manipulations of the psychological environment be associated with predictable, measurable, and meaningful changes in subjects' behavior. This study adds lowered perceptual defense to improved group therapy behavior as a criterion associated with reinforcement of emotional words. Thirty-two psychiatric patients receiving reinforcement for emotional words prior to taking a perceptual defense test (PDT) composed of matched pairs of threatening and neutral words, had lower PDT scores than 32 controls who took the PDT without prior verbal conditioning.

This article focuses on the book "Art Therapy in a Children's Community," by E. Kramer.

This article focuses on the book "Operational Values in Psychotherapy," by Donald D. Glad. This thoughtful book may well mark the beginning of a new era in the scientific study of psychotherapy since it makes the first systematic attempt to analyse the operations inherent in four major schools of psychiatric thought.