One determinant of the capacity to free-associate in psychotherapy.

The hypothesis tested was that "clients whose behavior when asked to free associate is highly variable, flexible, or productive exhibit significantly greater variability when judging the extent of autokinetic movement on successive trials than Ss whose behavior at the outset of psychotherapy is highly inflexible, stereotyped, or rigid." 7 neurotic college student analysands in the extremely flexible group were matched with 10 Ss of the extremely rigid group for relevant personal variables. Sherif's autokinetic apparatus was used, and each S's judgmental variability was determined. The highly significant difference between autokinetic variability scores of the 2 groups lends strong support to the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychotherapy cults: An iatrogenic perversion.

Conducted clinical observations of 5 teachers of psychotherapy and 26 of their patients, who themselves were practicing psychotherapists, which showed that psychotherapy may be misused to produce cults. It is suggested that these psychotherapists produced cults by failing to maintain professional boundaries with their patients. They treated their friends, students, lovers, relatives, employees, and colleagues and brought them together to form cohesive, psychologically incestuous groups of which they were the leader. They did not consider their patients' idealization of them to be a transference, to be understood as part of the treatment, but used it to encourage submission, obedience, and adoration, as in religious cults. Patients became "true believers," as described by E. Hoffer (1951), with totalistic patterns of thought, increased dependence, and paranoia. Both therapist and patients became trapped in a closed system that encouraged mutual exploitation and corruption. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)