This paper reviews the research literature on personal therapy and makes some recommendations for how future work in this area may be improved. Despite the general acceptance of the importance of personal therapy amongst therapists, there has been relatively little research to evaluate its effectiveness. The vast majority of studies have consisted of surveys of therapists' opinions and experiences of therapy or naturalistic comparisons across therapists who have or have not had therapy. The interpretation of most findings is compromised because of small sample sizes and confounding variables, nevertheless some conclusions can be made. Whilst the majority of therapists feel that they have benefited professionally from personal therapy there is very little empirical evidence that it has any measurable effect on client outcome. However, there is some evidence that personal therapy has a positive effect on those therapist qualities often cited as constructive to client change (e.g. empathy, warmth, genuineness). What is evident is that there is a need for more methodologically sound research as well as a more theoretical understanding of how personal therapy affects clinical practice, before any firm conclusions can be drawn about its usefulness. It is suggested that it may be more useful for future research in this area to focus on therapy process rather than client outcome.

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Surveys have tended to conclude that personal therapy for therapists is useful, but they have offered little information about how it is useful. The authors interviewed 7 practicing therapists about their personal therapy and how it affected their clinical work. In an intensive qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts, the authors identified 12 common themes, which they organized into the following 3 domains: (a) orienting to the therapist: humanity, power, boundaries; (b) orienting to the client: trust, respect, patience; and (c) listening with the third ear. Within each domain, participants appeared to translate their experiences as clients into skills and attitudes used in their practice. Thus, the authors suggest that by experiencing helpful conditions in their own therapy, participants seemed better able to provide them for their clients.Personal therapy for therapists has a central place in the history of psychotherapy (e.g., Freud, 1937Freud, /1964 and is often the subject of heated debate (see, e.g., discussion about the British Association for Counselling requiring 40 hr of personal therapy for accreditation;

Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN15517081.

The dynamics of women's labour supply are examined at a crucial stage of their lifecycle. This paper uses the longitudinal employment history records for the 3,898 33‐year‐old mothers in the Fifth Sweep of the 1958 National Child Development Study cohort in the United Kingdom. Models of binary recurrent events are estimated, which correct for unobserved heterogeneity, using SABRE software. These focus on women's first transition to employment after the first childbirth, and on the monthly transitions from first childbirth until censoring at the interview. Evidence of a polarization is found between highly educated, high‐wage mothers and lower‐educated, low‐wage mothers.