COMMENT: CAN SOME INTERPERSONALISTS BE MORE DIFFERENT THAN ALIKE? IMPLICATIONS FOR METHOD IN PRACTICE AND RESEARCH JOHN CHRISTOPHER MURAN Beth Israel Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine LISA WALLNER SAMSTAG Long Island University at Brooklyn The paper provides a commentary on two qualitative case studies of therapist use of immediacy in two brief interper- sonal psychotherapies involving two senior White male clinicians and two young female patients with diverse identities (Hill et al., 2008; Kaspar, Hill, & Kivlighan, 2008). The commen- tary proposes an alternative interper- sonal model by which the data col- lected could be examined. The model suggests that therapist and patient in- teract in a complex process of power and affection toward mutual recogni- tion, which is further shaped by their respective gender and cultural identi- ties. Several implications for the study of the psychotherapeutic situation based on this interpersonal model are pre- sented, including using observer-based measures that can assess power plays and therapist immediate awareness, as well as another qualitative strategy that would capture the richness of clinical process. Keywords: intersubjective negotiation, intimacy, power, ruptures, mutual rec- ognition Since the 1980s, we have witnessed a signifi- cant turn in the field of psychotherapy—what many have described as a relational movement (see Muran, 2001, for an elaboration). There has been a proliferation of discussions in psychoanal- ysis that have integrated various perspectives from object relations, self psychology, poststruc- turalism, and feminism (e.g., Wachtel, 2007). Likewise, the behavioral/cognitive (e.g., Kohlen- berg & Tsai, 1991) and humanistic/experiential (e.g., Watson, Greenberg, & Lietaer, 1998) tradi- tions have become more relational, making the therapeutic relationship more figural in their dis- cussions of the change process. Psychotherapy research in a sense has fol- lowed suit in that there have been a great many studies of the therapeutic relationship, with the majority demonstrating the predictive validity of the working alliance (Horvath & Bedi, 2002). There have not been enough studies, however, that have attempted to understand the therapeutic relationship as a mechanism of change with suf- ficient detail (see special section on the working alliance in Psychotherapy, 43(3), pp. 257–307). Thus, the contribution of Clara Hill and col- leagues as reflected by these two papers is at once much needed and very important. These articles describe two qualitative case studies of therapist immediacy, which the authors generally defined “as disclosures within the ther- apy session of how the therapist is feeling about the client, him- or herself in relation to the client, or about the therapy relationship [which involve] discussing and processing what occurs in the here-and-now client–therapist relationship” (Kas- par et al., 2008, p. 281). The aim of the research was to study the frequency, nature, and impact of John Christopher Muran, PhD, Beth Israel Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Lisa Wallner Samstag, PhD, Department of Psychology, Long Island University at Brooklyn. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Lisa Wallner Samstag, PhD, Long Island University, De- partment of Psychology, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11201. E-mail: lisa.samstag@liu.edu Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Practice, Training Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 2008, Vol. 45, No. 3, 320 –323 0033-3204/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0013307 320