The Psychotherapeutic Process from the Therapists’ Perspective: Personality, Therapeutic Alliance and Theoretical Orientation
Journal Title: Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy - Year 2019, Vol 22, Issue 3
Abstract
Introduction: The therapeutic process is largely dependent on the psychotherapist. The therapist’s view on the process, however, is a difficult task to unfold, given the complexity of the concept. As a result, one can only describe the therapist’s view on different components of the therapeutic process. Objectives: To explore the therapeutic process from the therapists’ perspectives: therapeutic alliance; the perception on the client and on himself during therapy; the psychotherapist’s theoretical orientation. To devise a personality profile for the therapists in the present sample and to explore the correlation between these different variables. Methods: The participants in the study are psychotherapists accredited in Romania (N=137), with various theoretical orientations, who filled in the following instruments: The Helping Alliance Questionnaire HAq2, The Big Five Inventory (BFI), Theoretical evaluation Self-Test, The therapeutic process from the therapist perspective. The sample was composed of psychotherapists officially accredited, from the Register of Psychologists in Romania. The inclusion criteria were represented by the existence of an official accreditation and the specialization (psychotherapy). Results: The results show that therapists had the highest scores on the following BFI scales: Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. The therapeutic alliance varies depending on the theoretical orientation, but the source of this variability cannot be identified in this study. Therapeutic alliance is also correlated with the perception on having results at the end of the therapeutic process. When it comes to the personality factor of Neuroticism, it seems that it varies proportionately with negative countertransference, and the Openness factor correlates with the Humanistic theoretical orientation. Conclusions: Through this study one can observe in which manner psychotherapists develop an image of the psychotherapeutic process and of themselves in this setting. This image is shown to be a cumulus of various elements of the psychotherapist as a person/ professional and different psychotherapy elements.
Authors and Affiliations
Angelica Hîrju
Keywords
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