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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 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.