This investigation tested the hypothesis that the probabilistic structure underlying psychotherapy interviews is Markovian. The "goodness of fit" of a first-order Markov chain model to actual therapy interviews was assessed using a x squared test of homogeneity, and by generating by Monte Carlo methods empirical sampling distributions of…

Assuming that counseling is an interlocking system of mutual influence and that the effect of various counselor/client responses on the behavior of the other is probabilistic, then it becomes important to understand what categories of factors contribute to the probabilistic tendencies of counselor and client to respond in different ways. One…