WHEN MORE OF A GOOD THING IS BETTER - REPLY

More of a good process component is better when clients are not alread y getting enough. Process components may be in short supply because of limited resources or ignorance, because they are evaluations themselv es, or because they are difficult-to-attain subgoals on the way to val ued outcomes. Levels of crucially important process components that ar e not in short supply (including most commonly used therapeutic interv entions) are unlikely to be statistical predictors of outcome. Convers ely, then, null correlations with outcome do not impugn a component's therapeutic importance. Many of A. M. Hayes, L. G. Castonguay, and M. R. Goldfried's (1996b) examples of positive correlations usefully illu strated clients' cognitive and emotional processes that were treatment subgoals or evaluative indexes. However, by focusing on the (relative ly rare) positive correlations, they overlooked the more common null o r inconsistent correlations of theoretically important process compone nts with outcome, which are the central topic of the responsiveness cr itique.