Vers un dialogue entre recherche et clinique : l'alliance thérapeutique.

Researchers and clinicians live in increasingly separate worlds, precipitating psychotherapy into a crisis of legitimacy. This paper hypothesizes that the therapeutic alliance, as an integrative variable, is an element capable of reducing this gap, considering in particular that the alliance between researcher and clinician is based on the same principles as the working alliance between patient and therapist. A few examples of empirical research allow us to address three conflicting aspects of our current knowledge about the alliance: as a common factor or as a specific agent, as useful to the researcher or useful to the clinician, and finally the distinction between the trait-component and the state-component of the alliance. The time has come to strengthen this vital alliance between research and clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]