Interpersonal competencies
Responsiveness, technique, and training in psychotherapy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13350076 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert L Hatcher (0000-0002-0465-3821, City University of New York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 747-757 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Psychologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-066X • E-ISSN: 1935-990X |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1037/a0039803 |
| PMID | 26618963 |
| OpenAlex | W2443204463 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 11 |
Professional practice in psychology is anchored in interpersonal or relational skills. These skills are essential to successful interactions with clients and their families, students, and colleagues. Expertise in these skills is desired and expected for the practicing psychologist. An important but little-studied aspect of interpersonal skills is what Stiles and colleagues (Stiles, Honos-Webb, & Surko, 1998; Stiles, 2009, 2013) have called appropriate responsiveness. In treatment relationships, appropriate responsiveness is the therapist's ability to achieve optimal benefit for the client by adjusting responses to the current state of the client and the interaction. This article was designed to clarify this aspect of responsiveness, showing its links to empathy, illustrating how responsiveness has been detected in controlled clinical trials, discussing how educators and supervisors have worked to enhance students' responsiveness, and considering how appropriate responsiveness has been assessed. The article also discusses the development of skills underlying appropriate responsiveness and the role of stable differences in talent in training of professional psychologists. Notwithstanding other pessimistic reports on psychologists' expertise, demonstrable expertise may exist in the effective, responsive use of these skills in treatment settings. Appropriate responsiveness may be a variety of executive functioning, organizing and guiding the use of many specific competencies. As such it may be a metacompetency, with implications for the design of competency schemes. Key to all of these considerations is the distinction between therapeutic techniques and their responsive use, which involves astute judgment as to when and how to utilize these responses to best effect in the treatment situation
Empathy · Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal relationship · Mindfulness · Psychotherapist · Social skills · Variety (cybernetics · Applied Psychology · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Educational and Psychological Assessments · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology
More than words
Are We Practicing Deliberately? — Assessment of Deliberate Practice in Psychotherapy
Lessons from the nursery
Residential Summer Camp Staff Perceptions of a Comprehensive Mental Wellness Initiative
Bridges and barriers in the psychodynamic treatment of personality disorders
Relationship between Mentalizing and Working Conditions in Health Care
Overlooked Ethical Problems Associated With the Research and Practice of Evidence-Based Treatments
Our Best Selves
| Citations per year | 0.89 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2026 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |