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This study submitted psychotherapists' recalled experiences in their families of origin to intensive psychodynamic analysis. The data were collected by using the intensive interview methodology developed by Henry, Sims, and Spray. Seven male and seven female therapists reported physical and behavioral conditions in their families of origin, which suggest helpless rage and conflict over the expression and acceptance of intimacy. Their current professional functioning reflects these early family experiences, including sensitivity to interpersonal stress and need to control interpersonal relations. The results are discussed in relation to the findings of Henry and his associates.Personal motivations for choosing psychotherapy as a career have long been of interest (e.g., Freud, 1953;Roe, 1953), with conjecture centering on factors rooted in the family of origin. Formulations have focused on the relationship of personal experience in the family to professional functioning as a therapist.Menninger (1957) believed that therapists experienced emotional rejection in their families of origin. They project this history in their interest in lonely, eccentric, and unloved people. This self-concept is intolerably painful and is therefore repressed, and professional functioning provides perpetual self-healing. Ford (1963), reflecting on his experience with trainees, hypothesized that therapists undertake training to deal correctively with conflict arising out of early personal history. He cited a pattern of dominating mothers who were central to therapists' emotional and physical wellbeing and fathers who were passive and nonnurturant. Ford inferred that such childhood experiences present severe threats to the therapists' ego integrity, requiring many years of working through conflicting objects and identifications during the therapists' training.Burton (1970, 1972, 1975) conducted an oral history survey of a small sample of therapists and qualitatively analyzed their reflections. He discussed how the therapeutic interaction satisfies the therapists' own emotional needs. Like Menninger and Ford, he felt that professional functioning offers shelter from interpersonal conflicts originating in the family. Family life sensitizes the therapist to emotional pain and provides powerful personal motivation for career choice. Burton further concluded that these dynamics unconsciously restrict the therapist's efforts at conflict resolution to therapeutic encounters, at the expense of personal relationships.Relevant empirical research has appeared only within the past 8 years. Henry, Sims, and Spray (1973) confirmed that psychotherapists' family relationships were indeed stressful (e.g., physical illness, difficulties in expression of affect, adolescent struggles over independence). This history appeared to foster interpersonal sensitivity and a desire to understand human relations. However, Henry et al. did not believe that these experiences were sufficient to account for the choice of a mental health career; they were unconvinced that...

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