The Central Relationship Questionnaire: Initial report.

Abstract

This study presents an initial evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Central Relationship Questionnaire (CRQ), a measure of central relationship patterns. These patterns refer to people's characteristic ways of relating to significant others in terms of their wishes, their perceptions of others' responses to them, and their own responses to both of these. The self-report CRQ is derived from L. Luborsky's (1977) clinician-rated Core Conflictual Relationship Theme. Overall, the results indicated that the CRQ components could be differentiated into meaningful subscales. These subscales were internally consistent, demonstrated significant stability over a year, and evidenced preliminary convergent and divergent validity with measures of interpersonal problems and symptomatology. It is concluded on the basis of these promising results that the CRQ merits further empirical development. Specific suggestions for accomplishing this are presented. Central interpersonal patterns refer to characteristic ways of relating to others and are thought to be the product of highly ingrained patterns or schemas of relationships with important others. These relational patterns are presumed to be initially constructed from emotionally laden interactions with parental figures in the earliest years of life that are then carried forward into subsequent relationships. According to psychodynamic theory, the patterns are compromise formations (Brenner, 1982) of conflicts between incompatible wishes (impulses) or between unacceptable wishes and prohibitions. A primary aim of dynamic psychotherapy is to address maladaptive interpersonal patterns across the client's different relationships as a means of achieving insight and eliciting therapeutic change (e.g., Davanloo, 1980; Luborsky, 1984; Malan, 1976a, 1976b; Strupp & Binder, 1984). The clinical utility of theory-driven measures of central relationship patterns has long been recognized by researchers as a central component of dynamic formulation, as an important focus of interpretatio ns, and as a theoretically relevant measure of outcome and change. Although early attempts to assess these theoretical constructs failed to