Personal Therapist Research Articles

O terapeuta na psicoterapia de grupo

Psicoterapia de grupo designa, atualmente, um amplo espectro de procedimentos fundamentados nos mais variados referenciais teóricos, aplicados em diferentes contextos. O objetivo do presente estudo é abordar o papel do terapeuta de grupo, delineando algumas estratégias e habilidades necessárias para o exercício da grupoterapia. Os autores enfatizam o nível técnico-científico em que o trabalho com grupos é desenvolvido e a influência da personalidade do terapeuta nos participantes. Concluem que, para que o terapeuta possa preservar seu papel, sem perder a especificidade de sua função por envolvimento com as múltiplas situações vividas com os pacientes, é fundamental a estabilidade de sua identidade profissional. Nesse sentido, o preparo do terapeuta, a partir de seu processo de formação continuada, é condição necessária para habilitá-lo a enfrentar as situações peculiares do contexto grupal, de modo a conferir à psicoterapia de grupo seu singular potencial terapêutico.

The Child Therapist's Generative Use of Self

The therapist's use of self, much debated in psychotherapy with adult patients, has received little explicit consideration in discussions of clinical work with children. In this clinical essay, I describe a style of working with children and early adolescents in psychotherapy that makes liberal use of the therapist's “self,” both in the narrow sense of the therapist's self-disclosure and in the broader sense of the use of the therapist's personality, intuition, and affective expressiveness. My discussion focuses on two facets of therapeutic work with children: (a) the use of self in the engagement of children in the treatment process and (b) the child therapist as a source of emotional support. Although not without some risks and limitations, and always accompanied by a necessary appreciation of the unique temperament and character of each child, talking personally to children fosters the child's openness in talking with us. At moments of acute distress, many children also derive immediate, visible emotional support—and, one hopes, some lasting increment of self-acceptance—from the child therapist's generative and humanizing expressions of self.

Clients' Experience of Partnership with Occupational Therapists in Community Mental Health

The occupational therapy profession is committed to providing services that are client centred. Partnership with clients is seen as central to this way of working. However, there is little published evidence about the types of service and the relationships with therapists that clients value. This qualitative study used in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven clients from three adult community mental health teams to explore the experiences of working in partnership with occupational therapists from the clients' perspective. The interviews were audio taped and transcribed verbatim by the researcher. The data were analysed by means of content analysis. This established four factors that contributed to partnership: the therapist's personality, the therapist's behaviour, client-centred skills and boundary issues. Five factors described as barriers to partnership were also established: the lack of an individual approach, the lack of communication and knowledge, the lack of confidentiality, the directive therapist and inequality. The personality and behaviour of the therapist emerged as important, with the participants valuing those occupational therapists whom they perceived as warm, caring, committed and hard working and who appeared to value them as individuals. It was also found that the participants used the language of original writing on client-centred practice to describe their relationships with their therapists: warmth, empathy, trust and acceptance. Further exploration of the barriers to working in partnership with clients is needed, but the implications for practice are clear. Clients wish to be valued as individuals by occupational therapists who are committed to working in partnership with them.

Use of the Group Therapist's Personality Via the Countertransferences

Rather than use the term therapist personality, the author uses an operational definition of countertransference to examine the intersubjective field between group therapist and individual patients, the group, and subgroups. Differentiating between objective and subjective countertransferences, the author traces their sources to the transferences and resistances that arise from individuals, subgroups, and the group-as-a-whole. The transferences, resistances, and their related countertransferences are then integrated with enactments and history to create interventions. The charismatic leader makes no differentiation between the countertransferences and primarily acts on impulse or a rigid system.

The Therapist’s Use of Self in Family Therapy

DANIEL A. BOCHNER: The Therapist's Use of Self in Family Therapy. Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 2000, 484 pp., $60.00, ISBN: 0-7657-0248-7. Countertransference (CT) is viewed by psychodynamic therapists as an obstruction to understanding the patient. Family therapy has paid little attention to it. The Therapists' Use of Self in Family Therapy, Bochner offers a metapsychology of the use of self. He does so by arguing that the therapist's emotional response to the patient's CT brings him or her into the family system and enhances an understanding of it. His definition of CT follows that of Winnicott who sees CT as due to therapist's unresolved conflicts or an unconscious aspect of the therapist's personality or as emotions that are a reaction to the patient. CT is viewed as informative and useful as well as problematical. Projective identification, as described by Kernberg, is said to be the glue of relationships and an important factor in CT. It connects intrapsychic dynamics to interpersonal behaviors. Bochner uses projective identification to connect intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics. In family therapy, activity and self-disclosure are an inevitable consequence of the therapist's CT. Bochner, a clinical psychologist who does individual, family and group therapy, offers a of treatment that attempts to integrate the psychodynamic and interpersonal. He calls it a relational systems model (RSM). Following an introduction, the author uses two chapters to review the use of self in individual and in family therapy. In his fourth chapter, Bochner reviews the intersection between intrapsychic and dyadic systems in groups and families. Systems theorists disavowed psychoanalytic concepts. In place of insight, methods and action became paramount. All of this leads up to his sixth chapter, the metapsychology of the RSM and a seventh on the therapist's use of self. In the seventh chapter he gives vignettes from nine different family therapists to demonstrate how the interface between the family and therapist can be understood by focusing on therapist CT and the use of different kinds of interpretations. He categorizes various points of view in these therapies, such as the psychoanalytic/ object relations model, the structural model, the experiential view and an integrationalist view. Therapists following the psychoanalytic/object relations use self-reflection as a central component in their work. The integrationalist therapist acknowledges that the experiential aspect of therapy is essential to the full use of CT. The vignette from Scharf demonstrates how the interface between family and therapist can be understood through therapist CT. The therapist openly uses his own personality to formulate an intervention. The Slipp vignette uses both systemic and genetic interpretations, but Slipp doesn't think of himself as part of the family system. …

Zen and the Art of Supervision

For many years, the teaching offamily therapy has relied on the in vivo observation of the student behind a one-way mirror. A telephone line is connected between supervisor and supervisee, and the former interrupts the latter every so often to point out all her or his technical mistakes. Besides processing the information from the telephone, the supervisee has tofocus on thefamily sitting infront of her or him. Most of the time, the family is more interested in what goes on between supervisor and supervisee than in the therapy. After having endured this kind of teaching, the author contends that the practice of psychotherapy has more to do with the therapist's personality than with the display of effective techniques. As a result, the supervision of clinicians should consist of helping them develop their innate skills rather than of imposing on them a set of ready-made strategies.

Who is afraid of STDP? Termination in STDP and therapist's personality.

Who is afraid of STDP? Termination in STDP and therapist's personality.

Personality of the therapist and theoretical orientation

This study examined the relationship between therapist personality and theoretical orientation from the perspective of the Five-Factor Model of personality. Forty-one psychotherapists completed the NEO-PI-R and ratings of theoretical orientation. Results revealed a significant relationship between theoretical orientation and certain NEO-PI-R domains and related facet scores. The Cognitive orientation was significantly related to the Agreeableness Domain and the associated facets of Straightforwardness and Altruism. The Humanistic and Gestalt orientations were significantly related to the domain of Openness and the facet of Openness to Fantasy. The Humanistic orientation was also significantly related to the Openness to Action facet. In addition, gender differences were noted in NEO-PI-R profiles, but not theoretical orientation.

Cooperation patterns of Israeli mental health practitioners.

The cooperation patterns of Israeli mental health practitioners were examined. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers were asked to fill out a questionnaire for a study investigating the influence of therapists' authoritarianism and ideology on their therapeutic attitudes. The cooperation level in mental health clinics was higher than that in psychiatric hospitals, student counseling centers, and psychiatric departments of general hospitals. In all three professions, the trainees were more cooperative than the experts. The cooperation level of the psychiatrists was the lowest, and women were generally more cooperative than men, although there was a significant Gender x Profession interaction. The fact that the psychologists and social workers were more cooperative may be attributed to their training, which places more emphasis on the therapist's personality and attitudes. The high cooperation level in the mental health clinics may be explained by the almost exclusive focus on psychotherapy, which encourages introspection.

Conflicting internalizations: Effect on development of trainees' professional role

Training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy stimulates both trainee regression and development-enhancing intemalization of supervisors. The internalization processes of introjection, identification and ego-integration influence both trainees' personal development and development of a professional role. Since both supervisors and the personal therapist are introjected and identified with, the possibility of trainee-perceived conflict arises. Where the identifications seem incompatible, trainees will tend to reject the supervision if it is overly dogmatic. If their personal therapy is conflictual, trainees will apply ego-ideal and superego structures to their personal therapy experience and reject their personal therapist. The reasons for this choice suggest the possible value of supervisor-personal therapist collaboration and a supervisory stance of identification with the learning process itself.

Internal Interactions with God

A sample of seminarians and spiritual directors was interviewed about their internal interactions with God, and a small comparison sample of psychologist who had been in therapy was interviewed about their internal interactions with a personal therapist. All but one respondent could recall internal interactions with seemingly vivid detail. There were similarities between internal interactions with God and internal interactions with a therapist in their privacy, psychological importance and psychological functions. But there were also striking differences. Interactions with God were experienced as real, not imagined, and God was perceived as all knowing. This made it unnecessary to use internal interactions to rehearse future encounters with God or to explain personal actions and motivations to God. In addition, God was generally experienced by spiritual directors as part of self, not a separate entity, whereas psychologists rarely if ever experienced the therapist as part of self.

The Professional Ex-: An Alternative for Exiting the Deviant Career

Research on persons exiting deviance has centered on identifying the processes where-by they abandon the behaviors, ideologies, and identities associated with their specific career by replacing them with more conventional lifestyles and identities. This study suggests that relinquishing the behaviors and lifestyles associated with a particular deviant career does not always imply total abandonment of a deviant identity. The central tenets of Ebaugh's (1988) model of role exit are applied and adapted to provide an alternative conceptualization of exiting deviance. Drawing on data gathered through introspection and open-end interviews with 35 professional ex-s currently employed in a variety of community, state, and private institutions providing treatment to individuals with drug, alcohol, and/or eating disorder problems, four central stages of this specific exit process are explicated: emulation of one's personal therapist, the call to a career in counseling, status-set realignment, and credentialization. Preliminary analysis suggests that professionalizing rather than abandoning a deviant identity facilitates exiting deviance.

Where are the commonalities among the therapeutic common factors?

There is little convergence or empirical research on factors shared by diverse psychotherapies. We reviewed 50 publications to discern commonalities among proposed therapeutic common factors. The number of factors per publication ranged from 1 to 20, with 89 different commonalities proposed in all. Analyses revealed that 41 % of proposed commonalities were change processes; by contrast, only 6% of articulated commonalities were client characteristics. The most consensual commonalities across categories were development of a therapeutic alliance, opportunity for catharsis, acquisition and practice of new behaviors, and clients' positive expectancies. The frequency of selected commonalities is presented and directions for future research are outlined. Mental health professionals have long observed that disparate forms of psychotherapy share common elements or core features (Goldfried & Newman, 1986; Thompson, 1987). As early as 1936, Rosenzweig, noting that all forms of psychotherapy have cures to their credit, invoked the famous Dodo Bird verdict from Alice in Wonderland, Everybody has won and all must have prizes, to characterize psychotherapy outcomes. He then proposed as a possible explanation therapeutic common factors, including psychological interpretation, catharsis, and the therapist's personality. In 1940, Watson reported the results of a meeting held to ascertain areas of agreement among psychotherapy systems (Sollod, 1981). The participants, including such diverse figures as Saul Rosenzweig, Alexandra Adler, Frederick Allen, and Carl Rogers, concurred that support, interpretation, insight, behavior change, a good therapeutic relationship, and certain therapist characteristics were common features of successful psychotherapy approaches (Watson, 1940).

Significance and Importance of the Psychotherapist’s Personality and Experience

The psychotherapist's personality demands an open dynamic organization of the psychophysical systems that determine characteristic behavior and thought. A therapist must think and act coherently with his social ideals. Freedom, creativity and affection shall help to achieve a true 'therapeutic disposition' where knowledge and empathy are paramount and constantly available. A real experience develops from authentic self-correcting practice. 'Countertransferential narcissism' must be studied in order to free the therapist from internal conflictive compromises. Thus, epistemophilic feelings--basic for psychotherapy--can increasingly be developed within a therapist's personality.

Choice Points in Psychotherapy Supervision:

The experiences of clinicians enrolled in study groups to examine the supervisory process form the basis for this particular. Following a description of the groups, the issues that received the most discussion are considered. These include: the primary focus of supervision; the developmental sequences within supervision; the therapist's personality; competing models of treatment; evaluation issues; and the multidirectional influences between client, therapist and supervisor. While supervision is not therapy, powerful elements are operant within the relationship. Parallel process as well as modeling paradigms suggest that what transpires within supervision has implications for the therapy and the learning of the therapist.

Psychotherapy in schizophrenia--theory and practice of individual treatment. A review

Psychotherapy together with pharmaco- and social therapy plays an important part in the treatment of schizophrenia. The following paper gives an introduction into the method of individual psychotherapy for schizophrenic patients. In the first part substantial psychodynamic theories of schizophrenia are reviewed within their historical background. Although none of them can explain the total spectrum of schizophrenic symptoms they may provide the psychotherapist some help to understand the patient. The second part of the paper deals with important elements of the psychotherapeutic situation: The therapist's personality and motivation, the nature of the therapeutic relationship, criteria of suitability, therapeutic goals, techniques and limits. Finally the question is discussed in which way individual psychotherapy of schizophrenia can be taught.

What do RET therapists think they are doing? An international survey

This article presents the results of an international survey of rational-emotive therapists who had completed either the Fellow or Associate Fellow program of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy. Two hundred and twenty eight questionnaires were mailed out, 144 (63%) were returned. The survey investigated theoretical opinions, treatment strategies, assessment procedures, in-session therapy techniques, homework assignments, therapist personality characteristics and preferences, as well as descriptive data on both therapists and clients. Results suggest that most RET therapists follow the philosophies and practices of RET as espoused and advocated by Albert Ellis. A significant number of therapists, however, disagree with Ellis in some of his philosophical views and appeared to adapt the practice of RET to their own preferred style.

Therapists' orientation and defensive styles.

A relationship was found between therapists' orientations, defenses, and demographics. Three significant canonical variates were derived. The first was a group of men with doctoral degrees using reaction formation and projective style with little doubt or regression and oriented against marathons, physical contact, and expressive techniques. The second featured regression, displacement, doubt, projective style, regressive style, and repression. This group favored the therapeutic importance of therapist's personality and psychoanalytic orientation while minimizing feeling secure as a therapist and the need for social adjustment. They had a relatively young, inexperienced, nondoctoral composition. The third variate emphasized rationalizing style and deemphasized doubt and projective style.

Therapists and quasi-therapists in a therapy analogue situation.

Evaluated an assumption from previous psychotherapy analogue studies, namely, that trained psychotherapists and untrained quasi-therapists with personality similarities will respond similarly to patient presentations. Ss were 24 male psychotherapists and 24 male undergraduate students, chosen partially on the basis of their responses to an A-B personality scale derived from the work of Whitehorn and Betz (1954). The three-factor experimental design included S personality type (A or B), S professional status (psychotherapist vs. student), and videotaped patient simulations (neurotic vs. schizoid), with all Ss exposed to both patient prototypes. Therapists demonstrated a higher degree of accurate empathy, were less active, made shorter responses, and used more declarative sentences (p less than .01 for each variable). Second-order interaction effects indicated that therapist personality type X patient type pairings produced opposite results for quasi-therapists when compared to professional therapists.

Contraindications and dangers of psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy, like any other effective treatment in medicine, may lead to negative effects either in the patient or those around him. The source of these unwanted effects may be in the patient's or the therapist's personality, in the patient-therapist interaction, in faulty therapy technique or in the patient's unresolvable social situation. The possibility of negative effects should be anticipated during the descriptive and psychodynamic assessment of the patient and before establishing the therapeutic contract. The technique of a trial of psychotherapy should be more frequently used than it is in cases where the therapist is in doubt. If negative effects do develop, these should be minimized by decreasing the frequency of psychotherapy sessions and depth of exploration. This may be done by allowing greater therapist "transparency", by making fewer psychodynamic interpretations and by altering the focus of therapy from problems of early development to problems of current living.