Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Copyright 1988 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

1988, Vol. 56, No. 5, 696-702 0022-006X/88/$00.75

Training in Experiential Therapy

Leslie S. Greenberg and Rhonda L. Goldman

\brk University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Literature on training in the core facilitative conditions is reviewed to highlight issues that have
emerged from this research tradition. A reconceptualization of the way in which empathic respond-
ing is conceputalized is called for, and suggestions are made about features that need to be addressed
in empathy training. Four methods of training therapists (didactic, skill training, experiential, and
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

personal growth) are examined, and a combination of these methods is proposed as the best means
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

of training experiential therapists. Current developments in manualization and adherence measure-

ment in experiential approaches are reviewed. The advantages of context-sensitive, process diagnos-
tic manuals are discussed. These manuals specify not only what the therapist does but also when and
in what sequence interventions are made.

Experiential therapy refers to a broad class of humanistic and
phenomenological therapies that emerged in the forties and fif-
ties, largely as an alternative to behavioral and psychoanalytic
perspectives. Experiential therapy in this tradition is best repre-
sented by the work of Rogers (1957) and Perls (Perls, Heiferline,
& Goodman, 1951), the founders of client-centered therapy and
Gestalt therapy, respectively. Systematic training programs in
these approaches did not develop until the sixties, when re-
search was conducted largely on training in the client-centered
tradition.
Experiential therapy focuses on increasing the client's aware-
ness of his or her current feelings, perceptions, and physical
state and emphasizes the formation of an accepting, I—Thou
relationship between the client and the therapist. The therapist
works actively with each client, often using special techniques
to enhance awareness and to promote the experience and ex-
pression of emotionally laden material. The therapist views cli-
ents as possessing the potential to grow and as being experts on
their own experience and does not interpret the clients' reasons
for their experience or advise them on how to solve problems.
Rather, the therapist is reflective or experimental in style, guid-
ing the client's attentional focus and making suggestions to
stimulate new experience. In a reflective mode, the therapist
symbolizes aspects of the client's experience and feeds this back
to the client. In an experimental mode, the therapist asks clients
to participate in an in-therapy activity in order to discover
something new about how they function.
Review of Training in the Facilitative Conditions
Initially, research from the client-centered group suggested
that high levels of accurate empathy, nonpossessive warmth,
and genuineness were associated with constructive patient
change and that an absence of these conditions could lead to a
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Leslie
S. Greenberg, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele
Street, North York, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3.
deterioration in patient functioning (Truax & Carkhuff, 1967).
This claim spawned a great body of research on the training
of therapists in the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to
create highly facilitative conditions. Such research began with
Rogers's (1957) graded training experiences and was continued
by Truax and Carkhuffs (1967) didactic-experiential training.
Finally, Ivey (1971) designed his microcounseling training pro-
gram.
In Rogers's (1957) graded experiences, the students listened
to tape-recorded interviews, experienced live demonstrations
by a supervisor, partook in group and personal therapy, con-
ducted individual psychotherapy, and recorded their own inter-
views for discussion with a facilitative supervisor. Rogers
stressed attitudinal and relationship aspects over training in be-
havior and was the first to emphasize that the most effective
learning occurs experientially in the same type of facilitative
environment as the patient-therapist relationship. In addition,
Rogers implemented the method of recording interviews for the
purpose of facilitative supervision. Truax and Carkhuff (1967),
in their didactic-experiential training program, argued that
most psychotherapy training programs had stressed theory and
patient psychodynamics instead of how to create a facilitative
relationship and emphasized that the skills of relationship
building were of primary importance in training good thera-
pists. Thus, they developed a program that trained students in
interpersonal skills. They implemented a training procedure
that began with the trainee's own experience as a learning base.
The three central elements of their training program (Truax &
Carkhuff, 1967; Carkhuff, 1969a, 1969b) included a therapeu-
tic context in which the supervisor provided high levels of thera-
peutic conditions, didactic training in the implementation of
therapeutic conditions, and a quasi-group therapy experience
in which trainees engaged in personal exploration to foster the
emergence of their therapeutic selves. Didactic training began
with students listening to and rating psychotherapy tapes on
scales that assessed accurate empathy, nonpossessive warmth,
and genuineness. Students were thus initially trained in percep-
tual discrimination of the conditions.
Studies were conducted to establish the effectiveness of the

696
 SPECIAL SERIES: EXPERIENTIAL THERAPY TRAINING
didactic-experiential training program in teaching counselors
the facilitative conditions. For example, Truax and Carkhuff
(1967) concluded that, during 100 hr of training that were spe-
cifically directed toward teaching the facilitative conditions,
they could bring the performance of students and lay personnel
to a level similar to that of an experienced therapist.
Ivey (1971) developed a training program that attempted to
teach specific counseling skills in a brief period of time. This
brief microcounseling training program focused initially on
teaching three basic skills: (a) attentiveness and related con-
cepts, (b) accurate reflection, and (c) summarization of feeling.
From 1 to 2 hr were allotted to the learning of each skill. In a
variety of studies (Ivey, 197 l;Moreland, Ivey, & Phillips, 1973),
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Ivey and colleagues demonstrated that skills could be taught
effectively through teaching, modeling, and practice.
Empathy as a Unitary Variable?
After a fruitful beginning, research in the training programs
faded out during the seventies, partly because the concept of
empathy was neither clearly defined nor clearly measured. The
theoretical assumption underlying the training programs was
that empathy was a unitary and therefore measurable con-
struct. To the contrary, studies were published showing that
different ratings of "empathic conditions" did not correlate
(Kurtz & Grummon, 1972) and that empathy was related to
a number of other variables (Matarazzo & Weins, 1977). For
example, Shapiro (1968) found that many of the empathy cues
were visual, although many of the related studies used audio-
tapes as data. In addition, he found that empathy was correlated
with demonstrations of warmth and genuineness and with a
global good/bad therapist evaluation. Empathy ratings have
also been related to the proportion of therapist responses relat-
ing to emotion (Mintz & Luborsky, 1971; Wenegrat, 1974). In
addition, Rennie, Burke, and Toukmanian (1978) found that
empathy raters focused more on the linguistic style of the coun-
selor's response than on the relation between the response and
the client utterance preceding it.
One of the strongest debates in the training arena has focused
on whether or not empathic conditions are a function of the
particular character traits of the therapist. The notion of a
"high-functioning" therapist was initially proposed by Piaget,
Berenson, and Carkhuff (1967) to describe a person who pos-
sesses the necessary qualities to display warmth, genuineness,
and positive regard.
The following decade, however, has produced a wealth of re-
search refuting the trait conception of empathy and showing
that empathy is dependent on the specific counseling context
rather than on the characteristics of the therapist (Beutler, John-
son, Neville, & Workman, 1973; Chinsky & Rappaport, 1970;
Gladstein, 1977; Mitchell, Bozarth, & Krauft, 1977; Rappa-
port & Chinsky, 1972). In a review of the literature, Lambert,
DeJulio, and Stein (1978) pointed out that both client-per-
ceived empathy and tape-judged empathy were superior to trait
measures of empathy in predicting therapy outcome. The au-
thors stated explicitly that the evidence revealed the assessment
of actual in-therapy interactions as most beneficial. Barrett-
Lennard (1981) proposed a more refined model of empathic
communication that laid out stages of the empathic process un-
697
derlining the "state" nature of empathy. His interactive model
conceptualized empathy as a process in which the client re-
counts the experience and the therapist first attends and receives
the experience, then resonates to it, and finally expresses this
awareness to the client. Next, the client receives this awareness
and evaluates the therapist's understanding. This view of empa-
thy as an interactive state that is created within the therapeutic
context is far more valid than a trait conception and suggests
that empathy can be learned.
Reconceptualization of Empathy
Barrett-Lennard's (1981) conception of empathic communi-
cation as a process in which the therapist resonates to the cli-
ent's experience takes an important step toward a more accu-
rate definition of empathy. Empathy involves a form of affective
resonance in which the therapist is able to sense what it is like
to be the client in the situation and communicates this to the
client.
Once the therapist is in the client's frame of reference, how-
ever, it is important for her or him to differentiate what is most
alive for the client so that the core emotional experience can be
symbolized and attended to. Greenberg and Safran (1987), in
their work on emotion in psychotherapy, suggested that the ex-
perience of certain emotions provides the organism with biolog-
ically adaptive information that enhances orientation and aids
problem solving. Thus, when entering the client's frame of ref-
erence, the therapist must attempt to respond not just to any
expression of emotion but to those emotions that provide bio-
logically adaptive information. Thus, the therapist is selectively
reflecting particular feelings at particular times. Empathy thus
involves selectively responding both to what is most alive in the
client's experience and to primary adaptive emotional re-
sponses.
In addition, effective empathy requires picking up the ongo-
ing, growing edge of the client's experience, the aspect that is
developmentally moving the client forward to a greater sense of
competence and mastery. The consistent recognition and vali-
dation of the growth capacity encourages the client to move to
higher levels of self-organization and to move toward therapeu-
tic change. For these reasons, it is appropriate to reconceptual-
ize empathic communication as a highly selective as well as re-
flective process. The principles of empathic selection need to
be clearly defined, and therapists need to be trained in these
principles.
A third and related requirement for developing a more
differentiated view of empathic responding is a clear definition
of when this type of responding is most appropriate and of what
effects it has at these times (Lambert, DeJulio, & Stein, 1978).
This follows the more context-sensitive view of process research
(Rice & Greenberg, 1984; Greenberg, 1986a, 1986b). In this
view, not all therapist or client processes serve the same func-
tion at all points in therapy. Rather, the meanings and effects of
different processes, such as empathy, depend on their particular
contexts. For example, an empathic response to a client's state-
ment of underlying vulnerability will have a different purpose
and effect than an empathic response to a client's voiced reac-
tive frustration. Alternately, an empathic response in a context
of consistent empathic responding by the therapist is different
 698 LESLIE S. GREENBERG AND RHONDA L. GOLDMAN
from an empathic response following a confrontation. The con-
text of an empathic response thus requires specification if we
are truly to describe this type of therapist operation.
What is needed, then, is a more accurate and specific defini-
tion of therapeutic empathy that goes beyond the view of empa-
thy as a global reflection of feeling. Initial attempts have been
made to accomplish this. Gendlin (1981), for example, pro-
posed the notion of experiential listening, which involves re-
sponding to particular delineated experiential referents, and
Klein, Mathieu-Coughlin, and Kiesler (1986) attempted to
measure aspects of experiential listening with their therapist ex-
periencing scale. A more comprehensive reconceptualization,
however, must measure empathy as a form of interactive com-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
munication in which the therapist uses a denned responsive
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
style while selectively focusing on particular client processes at
particular points in specific contexts.
Effective Modes of Training
The issue of how best to train therapists, through experiential
learning or behavioral skill training, has received a great deal
of attention in the training literature. The didactic experiential
program (Truax & Carkhuff, 1967) relied primarily on experi-
ential learning as a basis for training. The contention was that
if trainees did not experience high levels of warmth, regard,
understanding, and genuineness from the trainers, they would
not function at a high therapeutic level themselves (Truax &
Carkhuff, 1967). Ivey (1971), on the other hand, proposed the
teaching of counseling skills in a brief period (1-2 hr) and sug-
gested that experiential learning is not necessary. Investigators
evaluated these claims and compared the efficacy of the two
training methods (Matarazzo, 1978; Perry, 1975; Toukmanian
&Rennie, 1975; Toukmanian, Capelle, & Rennie, 1978;Quart-
aro&Rennie, 1983).
It appears from this research that skills such as attending and
summarization of feeling can be learned didactically through
brief tnicrocounseling training. The ability to create and main-
tain an empathic relationship, however, is learned in a more
experiential fashion (Pagell, Carkhuff, & Berenson, 1967). This
ability requires the perceptual skill to hear the subtle feelings
and complex meanings expressed by the client, which is a skill
that takes time and personal development to acquire. Once one
hears feelings in a differentiated fashion, the skill of reflecting
them is much easier to acquire. Empathic reflection itself, how-
ever, is not just a reflexive parroting act. As mentioned, em-
pathic communication is a complex interactive process that oc-
curs through many channels of communication. The ability to
be accurately empathic is thus acquired through experience,
which requires time and personal growth. Rennie, Brewster, and
Toukmanian (1985), for example, found that the ability of
trainees to deeply process their own experience as clients, as
assessed by the Experiencing Scale (Klein et al., 1986), was cor-
related with the extent to which they exhibited high levels of
empathy as therapists.
Research on Training in Gestalt Therapy
Research on Gestalt training has also examined the relative
merits of skill training and experiential learning. Gestalt train-
ing has primarily been taught in Gestalt institutes through the
medium of personal therapeutic work, emphasizing individual
awareness, personal growth, and the attendant attitude change.
Greenberg (1980), however, noted the need for training in ad-
vanced experiential therapy skills (Greenberg & Kahn, 1979),
suggested that some of the skills of Gestalt therapy could be
taught in a systematic fashion, and designed a combined didac-
tic-experiential and skill training program. This program fo-
cused on training in the use of the Gestalt two-chair experi-
ment, a method used in Gestalt therapy to help clients resolve
conflict by engaging in a dialogue between the opposing aspects
of the conflict.
Greenberg and Sarkissian (1984) evaluated the effectiveness
of this program. Results indicated that, after training, counsel-
ors responded to a client statement of conflict more often with
an appropriate two-chair dialogue intervention and provided
more direct guidance and more attention to nonverbal refer-
ents. The training program thus succeeded in training students
in some of the active intervention skills of Gestalt therapy.
This training program used four basic training processes by
combining behavioral skill training, conceptual learning, expe-
riential learning, and personal therapy into a comprehensive
training approach. It went beyond earlier interpersonal skills
training programs by encouraging trainees to work on personal
issues in a therapeutic fashion as an aspect of training. This
encouragement resulted from the rationale that increased
awareness of personal issues would facilitate a trainee's thera-
peutic sensitivity and firsthand knowledge of the process of
change. In our view, training is most effective when it includes
conceptual instruction, experiential learning, skill training that
involves modeling and practice, and personal therapeutic work.
Further research is necessary to evaluate this claim.
Current Developments
Rice and Greenberg (1984) suggested that the therapeutic
process in experiential therapy is most accurately construed as
a series of "when—then" events in which specific client perfor-
mance patterns are viewed as markers of underlying informa-
tion processing difficulties that repeatedly present themselves
in therapy as opportunities for different types of interventions.
Thus, when the client presents a particular marker, such as the
statement of a conflict, then the therapist intervenes in a partic-
ular fashion, such as by suggesting a dialogue between aspects
of the conflict. In this view, the therapist must be adept both
at making process diagnoses of client in-session states that are
amenable to intervention and at implementing appropriate in-
terventions. The perceptual skills needed for recognizing client
markers and states thus become as important as conceptual
(theoretical) or executive (intervention) skills because they de-
termine the appropriate focus and timing of the intervention.
Greenberg and Rice (1987) thus suggested an approach to
experiential therapy in which intervention is both marker
driven (i.e., particular interventions are implemented when
particular markers emerge in therapy) and task focused (i.e.,
each intervention is designed to engage the client in a specific
therapeutic task to help resolve the problem indicated by the
marker).
Manuals that adequately train therapists and provide proper
 SPECIAL SERIES: EXPERIENTIAL THERAPY TRAINING
adherence measures for evaluating the adequacy of treatment
implementation will need to specify not only what the therapist
does but at which time a particular intervention should be used.
Without this degree of specification, manuals are just a list of
ingredients. The sequencing and proper mixture of the ingredi-
ents, however, determine the true potency of any treatment. Ex-
periential manuals that have been recently designed will next
be reviewed briefly to provide both a summary of current devel-
opments and a discussion of issues in the development of pro-
cess diagnostic manuals.
Manuals From the Client-Centered Tradition
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Both Gendlin (1981) and Rice (1984) have described techni-
cal therapist operations that fall within but go beyond the provi-
sion of the Rogerian core conditions. Rice denned a client
marker, the problematic reaction, as an in-therapy state in
which the client describes a stimulus situation and a reaction
to the situation that is experienced as problematic. Rice then
detailed the characteristics and steps of a systematic evocative
unfolding procedure to facilitate resolution of the problem
(Rice & Saperia, 1984). The client resolution process has been
shown to follow a specific path, and this problem-resolution
model has been used as a process diagnostic guide for therapist
intervention (Rice & Saperia, 1984).
Gendlin (1981) provided a step-by-step phenomenological
description of a focusing procedure. Focusing involves the con-
centration of attention to create a bodily felt sense of a person's
experience. In the focusing manual, Gendlin described an im-
portant experiential therapeutic process and the steps through
which the therapist should guide the client to maximize the
gains from experiencing. Gendlin also indicated markers for the
best times to use focusing by suggesting that focusing should be
used when the client appears to be on the surface of something
important, feels confused, or has said all that he or she can say
about the problem and feels stuck (Gendlin, 1974). Thus, al-
though Gendlin did not formally design a therapist manual, he
clearly specified what the therapist and client should do and
when the technique of focusing is most useful.
Toukmanian (1984) developed a manual for training thera-
pists in a neo-Rogerian perceptual-cognitive approach that fo-
cuses on changing the manner in which clients construe them-
selves and the world. Markers for overly constricted information
processing, which impede problem solving, are specified, and
phases of intervention and specific therapist behaviors that are
used to modify this constricted schematic processing are de-
scribed. In another neo-Rogerian manual, Rennie (1987) incor-
porated the teaching of some of the basic client-centered inter-
personal skills such as attending and empathic responding but
emphasized training in both interventions that promote imme-
diacy of experiencing and metacommunication about the inter-
action between client and therapist. Metacommunication is a
key process in Rennie's view because it allows therapists to
know how they are affecting their clients.
These four manuals all specify approaches that have grown
out of a client-centered tradition. Each approach focuses on
particular types of information processing difficulties and
guides the manner of exploration to improve processing. To
train in these approaches, one must learn basic empathic re-
699
sponding skills in addition to other Rogerian relationship skills
and must also learn skills designed to help clients resolve partic-
ular information-processing problems. In addition, process di-
agnostic skills are taught to trainees, implicitly if not explicitly,
to facilitate the identification of client in-session markers of par-
ticular underlying information-processing difficulty.
Experiential Manuals
Mahrer (1983, 1986) has developed his own type of experien-
tial therapy. He divided this therapy into five classes of therapeu-
tic experiencing. The classes follow a sequence in which each
class of experiencing, while leading to change in its own right,
also prepares the person for the next class. The first class of
experiencing involves focusing on current bodily sensations.
The second class of experiencing involves the differentiation
and elaboration of the bodily felt experience occurring at the
moment. This leads to the emergence of an underlying state that
was not previously in awareness and then to the owning of this
experience as belonging to the self. Finally, the client is encour-
aged to risk changed ways of being and behaving in the extra-
therapy world based on this newly experienced aspect of self.
Mahrer has described both the general procedures followed in
this therapy and a host of specific interventions.
Can Experiential Therapy Be Discriminated?
A number of experiential manuals have attempted to detail
and measure the skills necessary to conduct experiential ther-
apy. These are reviewed next.
Experiential Therapy of Depression Manual
An experiential therapy of depression is currently being eval-
uated by Elliott (1988). The therapy is based on a synthesis of
client-centered and Gestalt approaches that was developed by
Greenberg and Rice (1987), who integrated a set of therapeutic
tasks into a client-centered style of relating (Elliott, Greenberg,
Rice, & Clark, 1987). The therapy is explicitly marker-driven
and task-focused, meaning that the therapist's interventions are
guided by process markers that indicate when a client is ready to
work on a particular task that is designed to resolve a particular
problematic experience.
This experiential therapy requires that therapists be em-
pathic and prizing, foster immediate experiencing, and facili-
tate completion of therapeutic tasks. The basic mode in this
therapy is reflective listening and imaginative entry into the cli-
ent's world, whereas the specialized techniques are Gendlin's
(1981) focusing, which is used to symbolize inner meaning and
deepen experience, and systematic evocative unfolding (Rice,
1984), which is used when clients present puzzling personal re-
actions to situations. The Gestalt technique of two-chair work
is used when the client displays splits (presently felt conflicts)
(Greenberg, 1984). Empty-chair work, defined as engaging in a
dialogue with an imagined other in an empty chair, is imple-
mented to facilitate completion of an incomplete experience
when the client expresses unfinished business with a significant
other (Greenberg &Safran, 1987; Perls etal., 1951).
Elliott has devised a number of context-sensitive measures of
 700 LESLIE S. GREENBERG AND RHONDA L. GOLDMAN
therapist interventions. The therapists rate their own intentions
and their adherence to the manual at the end of each session to
record whether they have identified markers and implemented
appropriate interventions. Therapist skillfulness in implement-
ing the interventions is also assessed. In addition, therapists rate
whether they used nonexperiential interventions such as inter-
pretation or advice giving. The amount of training needed to
reach adherence has not yet been specified, although it is clear
that considerable training is needed to learn the specialized
techniques.
Gestalt Experiential Therapy
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Greenberg and Goldman (1987) developed a manual to de-
scribe how a Gestalt experiential therapist creates and main-
tains a therapeutic relationship. The manual delineates both
perceptual and action modes. Within each of the modes, the
manual specifies actions engaged in by the therapist. In addi-
tion, the manual describes the intentions that lie behind each of
the actions.
An adherence measure was constructed to test whether the
manual adequately described their brand of Gestalt experiential
therapy. Based on the manual, a 17-item instrument was de-
signed to describe the therapist's conduct in general relation-
ship skills (e.g., attitude of acceptance) and specific interven-
tions (e.g., focusing on present experience).
In a preliminary study, minimally trained raters agreed on
the degree to which a relationship skill was being displayed 77%
of the time and agreed on which technique was being imple-
mented 73% of the time. The raters were given a set of 2-min
tape segments taken from Gestalt therapy, cognitive therapy,
and eclectic therapy. Ninety-two percent of the therapist actions
on the Gestalt experiential therapy segments were judged as ac-
tions represented on the specific intervention items, whereas
only 14% of the non-Gestalt therapist actions were judged as
Gestalt style interventions. Thus, preliminary indications of the
reliability and validity of this instrument were established.
In addition to this general manual, four specific Gestalt ex-
periments have been manualized (Greenberg & Minden, 1987).
Intentions and therapist actions have been described for each
experiment. A context-sensitive adherence measure has been
devised and is currently being tested.
Focused Expressive Therapy
Beutler and his co-workers (Beutler, 1986) have evaluated an
expressive treatment, focused expressive therapy (FEP; Dal-
drup, Beutler, Engle, & Greenberg, in press) for problems of
constricted emotion. This treatment focuses primarily on emo-
tions that relate to anger.
The treatment has been manualized in detail (Daldrup et al.,
in press). The five basic tasks in this treatment require (a) the
establishment of a focus for work, (b) the elicitation of a com-
mitment to work, (c) the development of the work process itself
to a point at which affective intensity peaks and declines, (d) an
assessment of the work conducted, and (e) the development of
plans and homework for the future. Within each of these phases,
the specific actions are described and markers are specified to
indicate when interventions should be implemented. In the
third phase of the therapy, experiments are implemented to fa-
cilitate emotional arousal. Daldrup et al. (in press) identified
five types of experiments. These are dialogue experiments, mo-
toric expressions useful to release emotion, verbal experiments
to help reorganize cognitive systems, nonverbal experiments,
and experiments of closure to facilitate continued movement.
Different types of interruptions of emotional expression as well
as the appropriate interventions for these have been specified.
The FEP training program comprises three phases: theory
development, skill training, and experiential learning. In the
first phase, a theoretical understanding is achieved and skills are
developed through lectures, demonstrations, and group work.
The second phase involves intensive skill training through a di-
dactic base combined with experiential work in both personal
and group settings involving supervision. The final phase in-
volves intense experiential learning with patients. Supervision
is conducted in person or through the use of audiotapes or vid-
eotapes.
An extensive set of adherence measures has been developed
to determine the teachableness of this manual (Daldrup et al.,
in press). Process diagnostic measures of particular client states
were developed, and the appropriateness of interventions for
these states was assessed. Data suggested that FEP is a teachable
method that can be applied in a reliable fashion. In a compari-
son of FEP trainees with trainees of two educational groups,
therapists in the two treatment conditions were rated as per-
forming differently, which confirmed the discriminative valid-
ity of the compliance measure. Finally, compliance scores of
FEP therapists were compared with those of therapists who
were conducting cognitive therapy. The FEP therapists consis-
tently performed significantly higher on a FEP compliance
measure at the end of training than they did either before train-
ing or compared with cognitive therapists.
Thus, an extensive manual describing the perceptual and
conceptual skills used in FEP has been completed, and an ad-
herence measure has verified that the FEP intervention manual
can be taught and implemented.
Future Directions
Clearly, research has only begun on second-generation expe-
riential therapy manuals, but it does appear that the actions of
experiential therapists are specifiable and that they are discrim-
inably different from the actions of cognitive and nonspecific
general practice therapists.
A number of trends are apparent from this literature review.
The first is the tendency to integrate different experiential meth-
ods into a combined treatment package. The second is the use
of process diagnosis to identify in-session problems in affective
information processing, which is coupled with specific inter-
ventions designed to guide the client to process information in
the way regarded as most therapeutic at that particular mo-
ment.
An important contribution from the experiential manuals is
their attempt to specify when an intervention should be used. In
addition, the specification of therapist intentions that lie behind
actions, as done in both experiential manuals and other studies
(Hill&O'Grady, 1985; Elliott, 1985; Stiles, 1986), is important
 SPECIAL SERIES: EXPERIENTIAL THERAPY TRAINING
in helping to define and discriminate interventions in the
different treatments.
An important ongoing issue in the training of experiential
therapists is the tension between training the whole person and
training in specific skills. Training that leads to attitude change
and personal growth is of great importance in experiential ther-
apy because it allows trainees to know in a personal fashion how
the experiential change process works. Trainees need to feel
comfortable with exploring their clients' inner worlds and with
the possible emotional expression that might occur. The best
training for this is the exploration of one's own inner world and
one's own emotional experience.
In addition to acquiring the appropriate therapeutic atti-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
tudes, trainees can leam specific intervention skills through ex-
periential learning and personal work. However, more work is
needed to explicate the perceptual and process-diagnostic skills
that are required to be an experiential therapist. Ultimately, it
is the experiential therapist's perceptual discriminations and
his or her ability to hear, see, and understand the subtleties of
the client's experience and to identify markers of underlying in-
formation-processing difficulties that determines the quality of
the therapy.
References
Barrett-Lennard, G. T. (1981). The empathy cycle: Refinement of a
nuclear concept. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 28, 91-100.
Beutler, L. (1986). An efficacy study of experiential psychotherapy
among depressed patients. Unpublished manuscript, University of
Arizona, Tuscon.
Beutler, L. E., Johnson, D. X, Neville, C. W., Jr., & Workman, S. N.
(1973). Some sources of variance in "accurate empathy" ratings.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 40, 167-169.
Carkhuff, R. R. (1969a). Helping and human relations: Vol. 1. Selection
and training. New \brk: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Carkhuff, R. R. (I969b). Helping and human relations: Vol. 2. Practice
and research. New \ork: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Chinsky, J. M., & Rappaport, J. (1970). Brief critique of the meaning
and reliability of "accurate empathy" ratings. Psychological Bulletin,
73, 379-382.
Daldrup, R., Beutler, L., Engle, D., & Greenberg, L. S. (in press). Fo-
cused expressive therapy. New \ork: Guilford Press.
Elliott, R. (1985). Helpful and nonhelpful events in brief counseling
interviews: An empirical taxonomy. Journal of Counseling Psychol-
ogy, 32, 307-322.
Elliott, R. (1988). Change processes in experiential therapy of depres-
sion. Unpublished manuscript, University of Toledo, Ohio.
Elliott, R., Greenberg, L. S., Rice, L., & Clark, C. (1987). Experiential
psychotherapy of depression. Unpublished manuscript, University of
Toledo, Ohio.
Gendlin, E. T. (1974). Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy.
In D. A. Wexler & L. Rice (Eds.), Innovations in client-centered ther-
apy (pp. 211 -246). New York: Wiley.
Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam.
Gladstein, G. A. (1977). Empathy and counseling outcome: An empiri-
cal and conceptual review. Counseling Psychologist, 6,70-79.
Greenberg, L. S. (1980). Training counsellors in gestalt methods. Cana-
dian Counsellor, 14, 174-180.
Greenberg, L. S. (1984). A task analysis of intrapersonal conflict resolu-
tion. In L. Rice & L. S. Greenberg (Eds.), Patterns of change: Intensive
analysis of psychotherapeutic process (pp. 67-123). New York: Guil-
ford Press.
701
Greenberg, L. S. (1986a). Change process research. Journal of Consult-
ing and Clinical Psychology, 54, 4-9.
Greenberg, L. S. (1986b). Research strategies. In L. S. Greenberg & W.
Pinsof (Eds.), The psychotherapeutic process: A research handbook
(pp. 707-734). New York: Guilford Press.
Greenberg, L. S., & Goldman, R. (1987). The relationship in gestalt
experiential therapy: A manual and adherence measure. Unpublished
manuscript, York University, Toronto.
Greenberg, L. S., & Kahn, S. E. (1979). The stimulation phase in coun-
seling. Counselor Education and Supervision, 19, 137-145.
Greenberg, L. S., & Minden, R. (1987). Gestalt therapy experiments:
A manual and adherence measure. Unpublished manuscript, York
University, Toronto.
Greenberg, L. S., &Rice, L. (1987). Experiential therapy: An integrative
approach. Unpublished manuscript, York University, Toronto.
Greenbeig, L. S., & Safran, J. (1987). Emotion in psychotherapy: Affect
and cognition in the process of change. New "Ybrk: Guilford Press.
Greenberg, L. S., & Sarkissian, M. (1984). Evaluation of counselor
training in gestalt methods. Counselor Education and Supervision,
23, 328-340.
Hill, C. E., & O'Grady, K. E. (1985). List of therapist intentions illus-
trated in a single case study and with therapists of varying theoretical
orientations. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32, 3-22.
Ivey, A. (1971). Microcounseling: Innovations in interviewing training.
Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas.
Klein, M., Mathieu-Coughlin, P., & Kiesler, D. (1986). The experienc-
ing scales. In L. Greenberg & W. Pinsof (Eds.), The psychotherapeutic
process: A research handbook (pp. 21 -71). New York: Guilford Press.
Kurtz, R. R., & Grummon, D. L. (1972). Different approaches to the
measurement of therapist empathy and their relationship to therapy
outcomes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 39, 106-
115.
Lambert, M., DeJulio, S., & Stein, D. (1978). Therapist interpersonal
skills: Process, outcome, method. Considerations and recommenda-
tions for future research. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 467-489.
Mahrer, A. (1983). Experiential psychotherapy: Basic practices. New
York: Brunner/Mazel.
Mahrer, A. (1986). Therapeutic experiencing: The process of change.
New York: Norton.
Matarazzo, R. (1978). Methods of teaching therapeutic skill. In S. Gar-
field & A. Bergin (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior
change (pp. 941-966). New York: Wiley.
Matarazzo, R., & Weins, A. (1977). Speech behavior as an objective
correlate of empathy and outcome in interview and psychotherapy
research. Behavior Modification, 1, 453-480.
Mintz, J., &. Luborsky, L. (1971). Segments versus whole sessions:
Which is the better unit for psychotherapy process research? Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, 78, 180-191.
Mitchell, K. M., Bozarth, S. S., & Krauft, C. C. (1977). A reappraisal
of the therapeutic effectiveness of accurate empathy, non-possessive-
ness, and genuineness. In A. S. Gurman & A. M. Razin (Eds.), Effec-
tive psychotherapy: A handbook of research (pp. 482-502). New York:
Pergamon Press.
Moreland, J. R., Ivey, A. E., & Phillips, J. S. (1973). An evaluation of
microcounseling as an interviewer training tool. Journal of Consult-
ing and Clinical Psychology, 41, 294-300.
Pagell, W, Carkhuff, R., & Berenson, B. (1967). The predicted differen-
tial effects of the level of counselor training on the level of functioning
of outpatients. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 23, 510-512.
Perls, E, Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt therapy. New
York: Dell.
Perry, M. (1975). Modelling and instructions in training for counselor
empathy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 22, 173-179.
Piaget, G. N., Berenson, B. G., & Carkhuff, R. R. (1967). Differential
 702 LESLIE S. GREENBERG AND RHONDA L. GOLDMAN

effects of the manipulation of therapeutic conditions by high and
moderate-functioning upon high- and low-functioning clients. Jour-
nal of Consulting Psychology, 31, 481-486.
Quartaro, G. K., & Rennie, D. L. (1983). Effects of trainee expectancies
and specific instructions on counseling skill acquisition. Canadian
Journal of Behavioral Science, 15, 174-185.
Rappaport, J., & Chinsky, J. M. (1972). Accurate empathy: Confusion
of a construct. Psychological Bulletin, 77, 400-404.
Rennie, D. L. (1987). Psychotherapy inside out: A training guide to sec-
ond generation person-centered therapy. Unpublished manual, 'York
University, Toronto.
Rennie, D. L., Brewster, L. J., & Toukmanian, S. G. (1985). The coun-
sellor trainee as client: Client process as a predictor of counseling skill
acquisition. Canadian Journal of Behavior Science, 17, 16-28.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of thera-
peutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21, 95-
103.
Shapiro, J. G. (1968). Relationship between expert and neophyte ratings
of therapeutic conditions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychol-
ogy, 32, 87-89.
Stiles, W. (1986). Levels of intended meaning of utterances. British
Journal of Clinical Psychology, 25, 213-222.
Toukmanian, S. G. (1984). Therapist manual: Perceptual-cognitive
method of therapy. Unpublished manuscript, York University, To-
ronto.
Toukmanian, S. G., Capelle, R. G., & Rennie, D. L. (1978). Counsellor
trainee awareness of evaluated criteria: A neglected variable. Cana-
dian Counsellor, 12, 177-183.

Rennie, D. L., Burke, H. L., & Toukmanian, S. G. (1978). Counsellor Toukmanian, S. G., & Rennie, D. L. (1975). Microcounseling versus
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

communication style as a determinant of rater-perceived empathy.
Canadian Counsellor. 12,235-241.
Rice, L. (1984). Client tasks in client centered therapy. In R. Levant
& J. Shlien (Eds.), Client-centered therapy and the person centered
approach: New directions in theory, research and practice (pp. 182-
202). New York: Wiley.
Rice, L., AGreenberg, L. S. (Eds.). (1984). Patterns of change: Intensive
analysis of psychotherapeutic process. New York: Guilford Press.
Rice, L., & Saperia, E. (1984). A task analysis of the resolution of prob-
lematic reactions. In L. Rice & L. S. Greenberg (Eds.), Patterns of
change: Intensive analysis of psychotherapeutic process (pp. 29-66).
New York: Guilford Press.
human relations training: Relative effectiveness with undergraduate
trainees. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 22, 345-352.
Truax, C., & Carkhuff, R. R. (1967). Toward effective counseling and
psychotherapy: Training and practice. Chicago: Aldine.
Wenegrat, A. (1974). A factor analytic study of the Truax accurate em-
pathy scale. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 11, 48-
51.
Received February 10,1988
Revision received March 16, 1988
Accepted March 16, 1988 •

1989 APA Convention "Call for Programs"

The "Call for Programs" for the 1989 annual APA convention will be included in the October
issue of the APA Monitor. The 1989 convention will be in New Orleans, Louisiana, from August
11 through 15. Deadline for submission of program and presentation proposals is December
15, 1988. This earlier deadline is required because many university and college campuses will
close for the holidays in mid-December and because the convention is in mid-August. Addi-
tional copies of the "Call" will be available from the APA Convention Office in October.