Patient's Perspective of Therapist's Self-disclosure

GUAJARDO, VIVIANA; OLIVERA, JULIETA; BRAUN, MALENA; ROUSSOS, ANDRES

Virginia Beach

Congreso; 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research,; 2012

Aim: The aim of this qualitative study is to address what former psychotherapy patient´s think about therapist’s self disclosure and analyze how this is related to therapeutic relationship. Procedures: Interviews from 9 former patients were selected for this study because patient’s had spontaneously talked about their therapist´self disclosure. Open ended questions leaded them to talk about their relationship with the therapist and about the content of the self disclosure, as well as the frequency in which self disclosure emerged during the therapy sessions. Analysis: Among self disclosure contents three categories were found: "demographic information"; "personal anecdotes"; and "personal information regarding feelings or personal relationships". These categories are also addressed as present in many sessions, present in more than one session and present only one time. These categories were also crossed with therapeutic relationship. Results: Preliminary results show that all the participants (which had self disclosure experiences during therapy) had a good relationship with their therapist and expressed "having a good time in therapy" in their own words. This study is the first part of a project that intends to deepen the understanding of the concept of the therapists self-disclosure as a type of intervention.