Retraction of Cuttler et al. (2019)

Reports the retraction of "Productive silence is golden: Predicting changes in client collaboration from process during silence and client attachment style in psychodynamic psychotherapy" by Ethan Cuttler, Clara E. Hill, Shakeena King and Dennis M. Kivlighan Jr. (Psychotherapy, 2019[Dec], Vol 56[4], 568-576) https://doi .org/10.1037/pst0000260. This retraction is at the request of coauthors Hill and Kivlighan after the results of an investigation by the University of Maryland Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB found that the study included data from between one and four therapy clients of the Maryland Psychotherapy Clinic and Research Laboratory (MPCRL) who either had not been asked to provide consent or had withdrawn consent for their data to be included in the research. Coauthors Cuttler and King were not responsible for obtaining and verifying participant consent but agreed to the retraction of this article. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2019-75736-005.) We investigated the process and outcome of the first silence event for each of 86 clients and 26 doctoral student therapists in individual psychodynamic psychotherapy. Antecedent client collaboration and client attachments styles did not predict type of client or therapist behavior during silence events. Client collaboration increased from before to after silence events if therapists were productive (mostly invitational) and if clients were productive (mostly emotional and expressive) during silence events. Furthermore, subsequent client collaboration was higher when productive therapist silence occurred with clients who were lower rather than higher in attachment anxiety. In contrast, subsequent client collaboration was higher when productive client silence occurred with clients who were higher rather than lower in attachment anxiety. These results suggest that type of silence and client attachment styles are important factors in the immediate outcomes of silence events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).