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In order to establish and maintain what we have named a communicational alliance in marital therapy, couples and their therapist generally (a) signal their affective involvement with each other, and (b) coordinate their behaviors to constantly maintain this triadic frame of involvement. In this paper, we empirically examine the manner in which this communicational alliance was elaborated and maintained using two approaches: (a) a behavioral and micro-analytic approach based on the coding of body and gaze formations; and (b) a global assessment approach based on external judges' assessments. Results indicated the two approaches to be compatible. In the case where the judges considered the communicational alliance to be high, overall observations of body formations and gaze formations indicated that (a) everyone was included, (b) each participant adhered to his or her role, and (c) these signals were congruent. Once a communicational alliance had been established, the trend was that it was maintained throug...

Refering to systems theory, we identify a supraindividual property in interactions between therapist and couple. We use gaze directions to describe the partners' behaviors and label this property the “mutual attending frame.” We propose a procedure to observe triadic interactions in a consultation setting and a method to measure mutual attending. The method is illustrated by the data analysis of two triads contrasted on measures of therapeutic alliance. We discuss the potential of this method for the description of the interactive aspects of the therapeutic alliance.