“Not a little Mickey Mouse thing”: How experienced counselling psychologists describe the significance of personal therapy in clinical practice and training. Some results from an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Abstract

The British Psychological Society's Division of Counselling Psychology currently specifies a mandatory period of personal therapy for trainees. However, evidence for the role of personal therapy in developing practitioner competence is sparse. This paper presents part of a wider ongoing interpretative phenomenological analysis exploring how counselling psychologists describe the meaning and significance of personal therapy in clinical practice and training. Detailed examination of a subset of data from this study suggests that personal therapy is valued as a vehicle for a genuine, often extremely intense relationship with the therapist, through which participants become able to establish authentic emotional contact with themselves and their clients. Whilst most participants felt that personal therapy should remain an obligatory part of the training curriculum, they were ambivalent about specifying its aims or evaluating its outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of establishing a sense of integrity and authenticity within the personal therapy experience and are tentatively situated within a possible theoretical framework drawing on current developmental literature.

Personal therapy for therapists and trainees: a theory of reflective practice from a review of the literature

“…Interestingly, the article is the only one to link PT to a model that attempts to clarify the processes within personal therapy. The authors argued that Fonagy and Target's model of mentalisation (cited in Rizq & Target, 2008b) is reflected in the therapists' experience of relationships in personal therapy and draws parallels between parental attachment, therapist attachment and the ability to be reflective in practice. Mentalisation draws upon attachment and meta-cognition theories to suggest that a 'child's capacity to reflect on mental states in the self and other emerges from and is indexed by the status of the attachment relationship with the caregiver' (Rizq & Target, 2008b, p. 145).…”

‘The power of being seen’: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of how experienced counselling psychologists describe the meaning and significance of personal therapy in clinical practice

“…The richness and quality of the data, the clarity of participants' descriptions and the psychological significance of the data to participants were all factors in the designation of themes. However, it should be noted that the selection of a specific subset of the data necessarily omits clarification of other prominent themes and participant material: a parallel paper (Rizq & Target, 2008) is in preparation, discussing the remaining master themes, and a wider discussion of the entire data-set forms part of a PhD thesis. In the following discussion, all names and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.…”

Utilization of personal therapy by psychotherapists: a practice‐friendly review and a new study

“…Personal therapy is generally understood to serve two main purposes: to enhance their professional development and relational capacities, and to increase the personal development, capacities, and well-being of the therapist. For instance, personal therapy may enable increased self-awareness through greater understanding of and reflection upon the self, and this can lead to increased empathy, warmth and relational skills, awareness of transference and countertransference processes, defense mechanisms such as projection and identification, and decrease the likelihood of burnout or unethical behavior (Norcross, 2005;Risq & Target, 2008, 2010Wiseman & Shefler, 2001). Others have argued that personal therapy increases therapist effectiveness and personal well-being through six mechanisms related to professional development (Grimmer & Tribe, 2001;Macran & Shapiro, 1998), as follows: (a) increasing sensitivity to one's clients' needs and enhancing the development of empathy; (b) allowing observation, learning, and mastery of therapeutic skills; (c) reducing therapists' stress, emotional burden, and eventually ''burn-out''; (d) increasing therapists' understanding of their own problems, conflicts, and values; (e) increasing conviction in the efficacy of therapy; (f) and serving as a profound socialization experience fostering a rite of passage into the role of a psychotherapist.…”