Experienced psychoanalytically oriented therapists' narrative accounts of their personal therapy: Impacts on professional and personal development

The impacts of personal therapy on the professional and personal development of experienced psychotherapists were studied through in-depth interviews with five experienced psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists (two men and three women). An adaptation of the method of consensual qualitative coding was used to study the narrative accounts of previous and current therapy experiences leading to the identification six domains: (a) importance of personal therapy for therapists; (b) impacts on the professional self: identity; (c) impacts on one's being in the session: process; (d) experiences in previous and current therapy; (e) self in relation to the personal therapists; and (f) mutual and unique influences of didactic learning, supervision, and personal therapy. Personal therapy is perceived not only as an essential part of the training phase, but as playing an important role in the therapist's ongoing process of individuation and in the development of the ability to use the self, to achieve moment-to-moment authentic relatedness with one's clients.