Predicting the outcomes of psychotherapy by the Penn Helping Alliance Rating Method

The Penn Psychotherapy Project reports further progress in its search for the factors predicting the outcomes of psychotherapy through the construction of the Penn Helping Alliance Rating Method. This method is based on the following two types of patients' statements during psychotherapy sessions: type 1, that the therapist is helping the patient, and type 2, that the patient and therapist are working together in a team effort to help the patient. The scales were applied reliably to the transcripts from ten patients who had improved the most and ten who had improved the least among the 73 in the project. Significant predictive correlations were found for the early helping alliance measures (eg, with status at the termination of treatment and with the composite of "success, satisfaction, and improvement"). In contrast, other theoretically important treatment variables were not significant predictors.