Verbal response modes and psychotherapeutic technique.

This paper presents a taxonomy of verbal response modes and applies that taxonomy to the verbal behavior of psychotherapists of three contrasting schools: client-centered, gestalt, and psychoanalytic. The taxonomy consists of a theoretically based set of classificatory principles that define a mutually exclusive and exhaustive set of modes. Its purpose is to describe dyadic verbal interaction comprehensively and quantitatively. Such description is a necessary first step in investigating the therapeutic effectiveness of different interaction styles.