November 2019
by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M.Couns, PhD
Therapy
is a unique relationship that is a rich, supportive and useful environment for
change. What goes on between therapist and client is, itself, therapeutic and
it’s not so much what is said, but how it is said and how it is heard.
The
client is encouraged to speak of those things that may have been unsaid for a
lifetime, and those things just thought and worried about. How, though, may
this be achieved? In this month’s article, I want to address the tool of
therapist self-disclosure. The reason is that it is still a disputed zone, as
it were, among therapists and clients.
Therapist
self-disclosure in therapy is when the therapist shares their own personal
views or experiences with a client with the purpose of improving that client’s
emotional or mental state, as well as possibly normalizing the client’s
experiences that may otherwise be felt to be too odd or crazy, while not
trivializing them. Its purpose is to
help the client and not meet the needs of the therapist. It should not be used
to add to the client’s problems. It may be used to decrease client anxiety,
expand their awareness to different viewpoints, and to increase their sense that
the therapist is genuine and is there for them, but it is not to be used by a
therapist to ‘dump’ their stuff onto their client.
As a
therapeutic tool, therapist self-disclosure should be used with conscious
discretion and wisely. It has the potential for losing the client so that they
do not wish to return; creating role confusion (who is helping who?); or
cooking up a situation where the client and therapist end up just being good
friends in the space of the therapy room.
Used
well, it can increase trust and rapport and offer a model for the client. After
all, in the counselling situation, we encourage client self-disclosure and
sometimes it’s useful for the therapist to lead the way, by example (as psych0-educationalists
might). This is most true in the fields
of drug and alcohol counselling, feminist counselling, existential
psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, narrative therapy, gestalt
therapy, and other modalities where self-disclosure may be used to reduce the
power differential between client and therapist to encourage better sharing.
The
therapist’s theoretical orientation really matters here. Those who disclose
(apparently this is about 90% of psychotherapists, according to one study) see
it as fitting in the interconnection between therapist and client (as I do).
Those who don’t disclose, are more interested in working through the client’s
projections, as per the psychoanalysts.
In
psychoanalysis and Jungian-based therapy, therapist self-disclosure is frowned
upon, following Freud’s injunction to serve as a mirror and blank screen for
clients, freeing them to project their own stuff onto the therapist. Supposed
neutrality is seen as important for the analysis of the transference. I
personally think such an approach is alienating for many people, including the
therapist.
I
remember seeing a client many years ago who had spent thirty years in
psychoanalysis in the U.S., with the same therapist. One day, she turned up for
her thrice weekly session, and the therapist wasn’t there. He’d disappeared.
About a year later, she received a letter from him saying that he’d gotten too
tired of working and so had retired. Maybe it would’ve helped if he had said
something to her about feeling stressed, tired, and overwhelmed, and then maybe
a genuine conversation and genuine change might have been initiated. A bit of
therapist self-disclosure might well have helped.
Real relationality
between client and therapist is, I believe, as do many, the agent of change in
therapy and understanding the value of relational perspectives (including
therapist self-disclosure) helps us do our work effectively.
Therapist
self-disclosure should be direct, brief, focussed and relevant and specific to
one’s own experiences/points of view. Used thus, no time is wasted and the
necessary therapeutic tension is maintained, creating a good and real change
environment.
