The influence of supervision and facilitative conditions on the psychotherapeutic effectiveness of nonprofessional and professional therapists.

Sixty poorly adjusted, fifth- and sixth-grade males were randomly assigned to experimental groups seen by professional, supervised nonprofessional, and unsupervised nonprofessional therapists, as well as to a no-treatment control. The therapists saw their clients 10 times. Excerpts from the 3rd and 7th sessions were rated by trained raters for facilitative conditions. Change in clients was studied through instruments which assessed change from three vantage points--the child's, his teacher's and his therapist's. Individual as well as group data demonstrated significant superiority of supervised nonprofessionals over unsupervised nonprofessionals. Changes in clients treated by professionals tended to cluster close to those treated by supervised nonprofessionals. Several significantly negative correlations between facilitative conditions and criteria of psychotherapeutic change were discovered.