Counselor Researchers Contribute to 'Psychotherapy Relationships that Work'

The American Counseling Association is pleased to announce that Florida Atlantic University professors Paul Peluso, PhD, LMHC, LMFT, and Robert Freund, PhD, LMHC, NCC, are the first counselor researchers to provide content for Psychotherapy Relationships that Work, the only comprehensive, evidence-based book on psychotherapy relationships and treatment adaptations.

The landmark third edition of the book, edited by John Norcross and Michael Lambert, was overseen by an interdivisional task force sponsored by the American Psychological Association Division of Psychotherapy and the APA Division of Counseling Psychology. The third edition includes seven new chapters that provide more ways to enhance the therapy relationship and to tailor treatment.

Emotional Expression in Therapy and its Effect on Outcomes
Drs. Peluso and Freund were asked to determine if there was a sufficient research base to commission a meta-analysis in the area of emotional expression in therapy and its effect on treatment outcomes.

“We were asked to participate based, in part, on our research on emotional exchanges in the therapeutic relationship,” Dr. Peluso said.

“It was a point of professional pride to ‘carry the banner’ for counselor researchers to be at the same level as many of the top psychotherapy researchers,” he said. “I feel like it says that counselor researchers have matured to the point where we can be on par with these world-class scholars.”

For their research, Drs. Peluso and Freund conducted a total of four meta-analyses, covering therapist expression of emotion, client expression of emotion, and the impact of each on the therapeutic relationship and the treatment outcome. The APA task force deemed the results to be “probably effective” and included the chapter in Volume One of the newly expanded two-volume edition.

The first edition of Psychotherapy Relationships that Work was published in 2002. A second edition, published in 2011, updated the literature reviews and used meta-analyses for a determination of relative effectiveness based on the overall effect size, ranging from “demonstrably effective” to “probably effective,” “promising but insufficient research,” “important but not yet investigated,” and “not effective.”

The third edition of Psychotherapy Relationships that Work is available from Oxford University Press.

The American Counseling Association
The American Counseling Association is the world’s largest organization representing professional counselors in various practice settings. Founded in 1952, ACA includes 18 chartered divisions focused on areas of specialty or principles of counseling. The association’s more than 53,000 members worldwide participate in 56 branches in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. ACA also collaborates with counseling organizations located in other parts of the world.