Emotional Intelligence, Insight, Transference, and Session Outcome

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between client emotional intelligence, insight, transference, and session outcome in a single session of ongoing counseling. Thirty therapists completed a total of 86 client ratings. The results suggest that client emotional intelligence is related to insight and transference. In most cases, emotional intelligence predicted the level of transference above and beyond the predictive power of insight. In addition, there is some evidence to suggest that emotional intelligence is related to session outcome. Moreover, the findings suggest that insight is a partial mediator of certain dimensions of emotional intelligence and session outcome. Attention, a subscale of emotional intelligence, and negative transference interact to predict session outcome. Overall, the results did not support the transference X insight interaction effect on session outcome that was hypothesized. Still, the findings suggest that level of client emotional intelligence affects the pattern of certain combinations of transference X insight interaction effects.