Publication details
Prožívání psychoterapeutů v průběhu psychoterapeutického sezení s depresivním klientem: zakotvená teorie. (Disertační práce PhD.)
| Title in English | Therapists’ in-session experiences with a depressive client: A grounded theory. (Doctoral thesis PhD.) |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2015 |
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| Description | Objective: Empirical literature on the interpersonal reactions elicited by exposure to a depressed individual identified two basic reactions: depressed mood induction and rejection of the depressed person. Relatively not many empirical studies is devoted to the topic of therapists´ own experiences when working with depressive clients, although working with depressive clients burdens therapists themselves significantly. This study explores how therapists experience psychotherapy sessions with a currently depressive client and presents a processual theoretical model of the researched phenomenon. Method: Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 30 therapists of various theoretical orientations, yielding a set of 22 in-session event descriptions. The grounded theory method was used as a methodological framework for the analysis. Results: The therapists’ experience was conceptualized as Experiential oscillation between gravitating towards a client’s depressive experience and moving away from it. It´s evolvement over the course of a session is depicted by a model of Depression Co-experiencing Trajectory with six phases: 1. Sharing depressive experience, 2. Turning to oneself, 3. Striving for symptom change, 4. Distancing from depressive experience, 5. Turning to a client, 6. Focusing on relationship. Conclusions: The resultant model can be used to organize existing empirical and theoretical literature on the topic by interconnecting different therapists’ emotional responses within a coherent process model, which allows to track the changes in therapists’ experiences, to name the relations between them and to connect them with the therapy’s in-session micro-processes. |