The study on core conflictual relationship of short-term counseling

This study utilizes the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method (CCRT; Luborsky and Crits-Christoph, 1997) on process study of short-term counseling. The purpose was to evaluate the formation and variation of interpersonal conflicts presented by nine clients, so as to enhance the understanding of the core conflicts of each client and how these clients were influenced by short-term counseling. CCRT was conducted by two raters to analyze the content of core conflictual relationship themes. The raters started with taking a twenty-minute vignette from four tapes of the counseling sessions which were the 1st, 2nd, 11th and the 12th. A transcript was taken for each session and the raters searched for relationship episodes (REs) in it. Further, other main persons were identified in REs. Three components, including wish(W), response from others(RO), and response of self(RS) were investigated and analyzed. The raters calculated the appearance frequency of each component and transferred them into formulation of relationship theme in written language. The findings are as follows. (1) The interrater reliabilities between the two raters over W, RO, RS are significant (Kappa = .21-.82, P < .01) (2) The most frequently described other main persons in 201 REs were 'clleague' (N = 87, 43. 3%), the second 'self' (N = 42, 32.8%) and the third 'family members' (N = 41, 20. 4%). The first three described wishes were 'to assert self and be independent' (N = 66, 32.8%), 'to be close and accepted' (N = 48, 23.9%), and 'to be loved and understood' (N = 35, 17.4%) (3) The change of pervasiveness scores of each component in terms of positive and negative responses evaluated by t-test were found to decrease significantly in NRO (r = -2.73, p < .05). The score was most significantly decreased in 'rejecting and opposing' item (t = -3.83, p < .01). Conclusions and suggestions regarding application of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme analytical and categorization methods in the Chinese context are presented.