Client experiences of agency in therapy

Abstract

This study sought an understanding of clients' experiences with psychotherapy from clients' own points of view. Eleven 18–23-year-old clients or former clients participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews about their experiences and opinions of therapy. The interviews were transcribed, and themes were extracted, drawing on techniques from Grounded Theory. From the themes that emerged in this analysis, we focus in this paper on the major theme of client agency, by which we mean clients actively making and enacting choices regarding their therapy. Agency was consistently salient and highly valued by the participants; it encompassed participant accounts of (a) doing the work of therapy, (b) informing themselves about therapy, (c) different manifestations of agency in different therapeutic approaches, (d) their valuing of accomplishment and empowerment, (e) how experiences in therapy differed from expectations, and (f) experiences of compromised agency.