Solicited and Unsolicited Therapist Advice inPsychodynamic Psychotherapy: Is it Advised?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although therapists often provide advice in psychotherapy, we have minimal empirical evidence about its effect. For the current study, we examined the antecedents and consequences of solicited and unsolicited advice in individual psychodynamic psychotherapy for 98 adult clients and 30 doctoral student therapists. In solicited advice events, therapists were more likely to give advice when there was high antecedent client collaboration; clients sought more outside-of-therapy advice when antecedent client collaboration was high and more therapy-related advice when antecedent client collaboration was low; subsequent client collaboration was low when therapists gave advice and when the advice was therapy-related; therapists who were anxiously attached were more likely to give advice to clients who were anxiously attached, whereas therapists who were less anxiously attached were more likely to give advice to clients who were less anxiously attached; therapists were more likely to give advice when therapists or clients had lower attachment avoidance. For unsolicited advice, client collaboration decreased after advice was given, and therapists who were anxiously attached were less likely to give advice to clients who were anxiously attached. We concluded that psychodynamic therapists should be cautious about giving advise and should be aware of how their own and their client’s attachment styles influence their advice-giving behavior.