Clinician's Digest Mar/Apr - Page 7

 

The results, published in the December Journal of Clinical Psychology, show that cognitive and behavioral therapists, as well as therapists who identified themselves primarily as academicians or administrators, were the likeliest to have avoided therapy. Their personal reasons for abstaining boiled down to the idea that they hadn't really needed it—they had alternative methods of dealing with stress, had the support of family, friends, and coworkers, or "were able to meet challenges on their own."

In another study, soon to appear in Psychotherapy, Norcross found that therapists consistently rate their experience in the client's chair as extremely useful in helping them establish rapport with clients and renewing their faith in the effectiveness of therapy. Nevertheless, he points out, no research demonstrates an association between therapists' being in therapy and their professional effectiveness.

Norcross, one of the leading researchers into the components of effective therapy, doesn't think that experience as a client is essential to developing clinical effectiveness. "What keeps coming out of the research," he says, "is the importance of a therapist's heightened sensitivity to the therapy relationship." While being a client certainly produces that, he believes that clinicians can learn that kind of attunement through other experiences, such as yoga, meditation, or empathic supervision—anything that helps a therapist "know the power of empathy and presence" and "feel the vulnerability of being on the other side."

Resources

Cell Phones: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7797155.stm; Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 39, no. 5 (October 2008): 546-52. Support Groups: Cancer 113, no. 12 (November 17, 2008): 3450-58. Revenge: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95, no. 6 (December 2008): 1316-24. Parents Not There: Pew Report at www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Networked_Family.pdf; Pentagon project at www.dodsbir.net/sitis/diplay_topic.asp?Bookmark=34653. Scammed: Skeptic, December 23, 2008, http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-12-23.html#feature. Therapists as Clients: Journal of Clinical Psychology 64, no. 12 (October 21, 2008): 1368-76.

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