Therapist interventions: do they really influence client resistance?

Abstract

Client resistance is one of the focal points in most approaches to marital and family therapy. Many approaches conceptualize resistance as something to be reduced for therapy to be effective; however, the structural and strategic therapies are unique because they also conceptualize change as resulting from interventions that use resistance. The present study compared the amount of resistance that was engendered between interventions that use resistance and those that decrease resistance. The interventions that were designed to use resistance as well as defusing conflict both had statistically higher resistance ratios than the rest of the interventions.