The client-counselor match and the corrective emotional experience: Evidence from interpersonal and attachment research

Models of brief psychodynamic therapy posit the corrective emotional experience as a key factor in therapeutic change. Although widely taught and used, these models do not have strong empirical support. This article proposes the client-counselor match as a facilitating condition for a corrective emotional experience and reviews the relevant evidence front attachment and interpersonal research. Overall, the notion of the corrective emotional experience has received some support from attachment research, which looks at complementarity of styles at the personality level. Interpersonal research, rather, considers complementarity of actual exchanges in therapy and has yielded mixed results. It thus appears that the validity of the corrective experience has yet to be established, notably through the use of a more fine-grained approach.