This is a natural field study which explores and tracks processes between counselors and clients over the course of therapy for five dyads. Quantitative and qualitative instruments were used in a cooperative, interpretive analysis to follow the cognitive mediations of counselors and clients beyond therapy sessions and into their life contexts. This was facilitated by administrating all instruments twice weekly so as to measure fluctuations in responses due to ongoing, intrapersonal processing, the impact of additional interpersonal encounters, and the occurrence of extrasession events. Measures used include the Session Evaluation Questionnaire, Working Alliance Inventory-Short Form, and a Guided Inquiry developed for this study to sample cognitive mediations.
Findings emphasize the cognitive mediational processes of counselors in terms of their experience of dissonance within and beyond therapy, their subsequent adjustments of interventions for upcoming therapy sessions, and their alterations of their role functions in order to optimize therapeutic impacts for clients and reduce personal dissonance. Implications for future research include tracking the impacts of therapy across the ongoing interpersonal interactions occurring beyond sessions as found in couples counseling, family counseling, supervisory processes, organizational settings; and in researching transference processes and counselor burnout.