Personal therapy of psychotherapists: Conception, methods and preliminary results of an empirical research project

Abstract

The paper gives an overview of the backgrounds, issues and methods of a research project and a study designed to explore positive and negative processes and outcomes of personal therapies of psychotherapists. 100 Austrian psychotherapists (18% of a systematic sample of 600 Austrian psychotherapists) answered a questionnaire in which they gave information about the number, amount of time they had spent, negative and stressful encounters they had experienced and the positive and negative outcomes their therapies had for them in their o^ view. 100% of the therapists had completed at least one therapy, in the mean however four episodes were spent by every subject (600 hours mean duration; approximately 150 hours per episode). Most therapists perceive their personal therapies as very successful and helpful for their personal and professional developments. Nevertheless, in about 25% of the therapies negative and stressful experiences were encountered and 15% of the therapies had some kind of negative outcome, e.g. reduction of self esteem, intensive and long lasting distress, troubles in close relationships etc.. Therapies conducted during training were more affected by these problems compared to those out of it. In the conclusion consequences and implications of these findings are discussed for personal therapy in training of psychotherapists.

Keywords:
Personal therapy, training-therapy, training-analysis, training of psychotherapists, evaluation, psychotherapy.