Clinical responses of A and B practising psychotherapists to schizoid and neurotic patient prototypes

Eighty-three male psychotherapists varying on A-B type and experience orally responded to tape-recordings of simulated schizoid and neurotic patients in the privacy of their own offices. Five dimensions of therapist response were studied: accurate empathy, positive social-emotional reactions, negative social-emotional reactions, length of response and proportion of declarative statements. Although the simple A-B interaction effect was not found, significant second-order interactions were found for both accurate empathy and positive reactions which indicated that the predicted interaction effect tends to be upheld for inexperienced therapists but attenuated or reversed for experienced therapists. A significantly reversed interaction for experienced therapists' response length was also found. Examination of the results from this study and previous studies suggested a revision of the A-B interaction hypothesis: for inexperienced therapists, As will be more effective with schizoids/schizophrenics than Bs, whereas Bs will surpass As with neurotics; for experienced therapists, however, this interaction will be attenuated or reversed. Speculations about underlying processes in A-B interaction phenomena were offered.