Abstract
Since the discovery of “countertransference”, it was recognized that the therapist’s personality plays an important role in determining the course of psychotherapy. However, systematic empirical works on this topic have been sparse compared to the enormous amount of theoretical literature. Therefore, in the following pilot study, the emotional profile of psychotherapists was investigated using the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS), a quantitative measure of the basic emotional foundations of human personality based on Jaak Panksepp’s neuro-ethological studies. More specifically, we submitted the ANPS to a population of Gestalt-therapists to ascertain if they share a characteristic emotional profile (1) and if the emotional traits of personality are related to specific intersubjective competences (2). Our results show that, compared with normal population, the personality of therapists is characterized by higher expression of PLAYFULNESS/joy, CARE/nurturance and Spirituality, as well as a significant decrease in the expression of the RAGE/anger disposition. Such emotional traits, that are not influenced by the experience of training, correlate with important relational skills such as empathy, reflective functioning and interoceptive awareness. Therefore, unlearned emotional dispositions have high relevance in the development of the therapist’s sensitivity to the phenomenological intersubjective field, a competence recently called “Aesthetic Relational Knowledge” in a contemporary Gestalt-approach. Our findings may have implications for training therapists and optimizing treatment outcomes.
Highlights
The personal involvement of the therapist in the clinical work with patients was first recognized by Freud et al (1910), who introduced the term “countertransference” to refer to an analyst’s emotional response to the patient (Gabbard, 2014)
Regarding the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) test, statistically significant departures from normality were observed for all scales, while departures in variance homogeneity were significant for all scales except for “Not-distracting” and “Not-worrying”
Regarding the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire-8 (RFQ-8) test, statistically significant departures from normality and variance equality were observed for both the reflective functioning quotient (RFQ)-C or RFQ-U indices
Summary
The personal involvement of the therapist in the clinical work with patients was first recognized by Freud et al (1910), who introduced the term “countertransference” to refer to an analyst’s emotional response to the patient (Gabbard, 2014). An essential part of the clinical work for psychotherapists has reserved to the process of managing the emotional relational field evoked in the here and of the therapeutic relationship (Stern, 2004). A contemporary evolution of the concept of intersubjective sensitivity, developed within a Gestalt therapy approach, is that of Aesthetic Relational Knowledge (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2017a, 2017b, 2018), defined as “the way in which the therapist uses her senses to understand the patient’s situation through embodied empathy (i.e. identification with the patient’s experience) and resonance (i.e. personal and sensitive reaction to the field in front of the patient)” Further empirical research is needed to identify those qualities that might influence therapeutic change (Kazdin, 2009; Norcross & Wampold, 2011)
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