2011/09/09 by Jane E. Higham, Jane Higham, Myrna L. Friedlander +3
Medicine · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Alliance #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Autonomy #Child Welfare and Adoption #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Clinical psychology #Developmental psychology #Disengagement theory #Exploratory research #Medicine #Psychology #Psychotherapist #Session (web analytics) #Set (abstract data type)
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-6427.2011.00571.x
crossref issued 2011/09/09 · crossref published 2011/09/09 · crossref published-online 2011/09/09 · openalex publication_date 2011/09/09 · crossref created 2011/09/09 · crossref published-print 2012/02/01 · crossref deposited 2023/10/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Informed by a trans‐theoretical model of the therapeutic alliance in conjoint family therapy, this exploratory study was the initial stage in a task analysis of critical shifts in adolescent engagement. Specifically, we compared sessions in which a resistant adolescent either did or did not shift from negative to positive engagement during the session. Two successful and two unsuccessful change events were selected from an archival data set based on SOFTA ratings of the therapeutic alliance. The results suggested that one parent element (support) and five therapist elements (structuring therapeutic conversations, fostering autonomy, building systemic awareness, rolling with resistance and understanding the adolescent's subjective experience) seemed critical for successfully facilitating adolescent engagement. The qualitative results were informed by the adolescent's self‐reported target complaints pretreatment, which suggested varying reasons for the teenagers’ active or passive disengagement. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are offered to continue this line of inquiry.