Productive silence is golden: Predicting changes in client collaboration from process during silence and client attachment style in psychodynamic psychotherapy.

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) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Shyness, Preference for Solitude, and Adolescent Internalizing: The Roles of Maternal, Paternal, and Best-Friend Support.

The researchers examined differential outcomes related to two distinct motivations for withdrawal (preference for solitude and shyness) as well as the possibility that support from important others (mothers, fathers, and best friends) attenuate any such links. Adolescents (159 males, 171 females) reported on their motivations to withdraw, internalizing symptoms, and relationship quality in eighth grade, as well as their anxiety and depression in ninth grade. Using structural equation modeling, the authors found that maternal support weakened the association between shyness and internalizing problems; friend support weakened the association between preference for solitude and depression; and friend support strengthened the association between shyness and depression. Results suggest that shy adolescents may not derive the same benefits from supportive friendships as their typical peers.

Meaning in life in psychotherapy: The perspective of experienced psychotherapists.

OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to explore the meaning experienced psychotherapists derive from providing psychotherapy, their beliefs about the role of meaning in life (MIL) in psychotherapy, how they worked with MIL with a client who explicitly presented concerns about MIL, and how they worked with a different client for whom MIL was a secondary and more implicit concern. METHOD: Thirteen experienced psychotherapists were interviewed and data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research. RESULTS: Therapists derived self-oriented meaning (e.g., feeling gratified, fulfilled, connected) and other-oriented meaning (helping others, making the world a better place) from providing psychotherapy. They believed that MIL is fundamental and underlies all human concerns, including those brought to therapy. In contrast to the clients who had implicit MIL concerns, clients who explicitly presented MIL concerns were reported to have more interpersonal problems and physical problems, but about the same amount of psychological distress and loss/grief. Therapists used insight-oriented interventions, support, action-oriented interventions, and exploratory interventions to work with MIL with both types of clients, but used more exploratory interventions with implicit than explicit MIL clients. CONCLUSIONS: MIL is a salient topic for experienced, existentially oriented psychotherapists; they work with MIL extensively with some clients in psychotherapy. We recommend that therapists receive training to work with MIL in therapy, and that they pay attention to MIL concerns when they conduct psychotherapy. We also recommend additional research on MIL in psychotherapy.