Abstract

SANTO, Rosânia Ataíde Dourado  and  VANDENBERGHE, Luc. Scope and function of the therapist's feelings in the therapeutic relationship. Contextos Clínic [online]. 2015, vol.8, n.2, pp. 193-200. ISSN 1983-3482.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4013/ctc.2015.82.08.

The present study deals with the role of the therapist's feelings and with how these can contribute to the therapeutic process. How can careful discrimination of the feelings of the therapist help make well-directed choices during treatment? With this aim, specific moments in two cases of functional analytic psychotherapy are discussed. The analysis concentrates on the concepts of T1 and T2 that characterize the behavior of the therapist in functional analytic psychotherapy's theoretical model. Fragments of the treatments analyzed show how counterproductive therapist behavior (T1) and effective therapist behavior (T2) relate to the discrimination of the therapist's feelings. The material shows that keen observation of the therapist's feelings can help detect tricky contingencies in the relationship with the client and thus prevent inefficient therapeutic conduct. Besides, the precise discrimination of the feelings the client evokes in the therapist can help choose interventions that are more productive. The article concludes that therapists need to develop definite attention to their feelings, because these contain clues concerning the client's problems, can clarify what is happening in session and can help conduct treatment in more sensitive ways.

Keywords : feelings; therapeutic relationship; functional analytic psychotherapy.

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