Effects of graduate clinicians' personal therapy on therapeutic alliance and outcome

There is a conviction among many psychotherapists that personal therapy is useful to help therapists with their practice. Surveys generally support this notion and cite many ways in which personal therapy is believed to be helpful to therapists in both personal and professional areas. While some clinicians believe that personal therapy should be a mandatory part of clinician training, empirical research on personal therapy related to specific psychotherapy process or outcomes is scarce and shows mixed results. The current study aims to add to the empirical knowledge base of personal therapy and to examine one way in which personal therapy may affect the treatment process, namely through the therapeutic alliance. Patient participants were 54 individuals seeking outpatient treatment at a university-based clinic. Clinician participants were 14 advanced doctoral students enrolled in an APA Clinical Ph.D. program. Patients were given the CASF-P to complete after the feedback session and clinicians were asked to independently complete the CASF-T. The CASF-CLIN and Personal Therapy Questionnaire were given to clinicians to fill out at completion of their participation of their yearlong clinical-research practicum. A standard battery of outcome measures as well as process ratings were completed by the patients immediately after selected sessions. It was found that clinician personal therapy alliance is related to their length of treatment. It was also found that clinician personal therapy alliance is related to the graduate clinician's overall rating of helpfulness of therapy.;Additionally, clinician personal therapy alliance was related to that clinician's patient's rating of symptom improvement. Specifically, clinician personal therapy alliance was related to that clinician's patient's rating of improved relationships over the course of therapy, and the patient's feeling that he is more in control of his life as compared to before treatment. Additionally, a trend was found for clinician personal therapy alliance to be related to the patient's estimate of improvement after accounting for therapist effects, strengthening our finding that these two variables are related. The specific PEI items that were found to be related to clinician personal therapy alliance as a trend after accounting for therapist effects were how helpful that clinician's patient found therapy, how much that clinician's patient's feelings about himself changed as a result of therapy, and how in control the patient felt of his own life in comparison to before treatment. Furthermore, specific PEI items that were found to be significantly related to clinician personal therapy alliance after accounting for therapist effects were how much that clinician's patient felt his relationships had improved over the course of therapy and how satisfied that clinician's patient felt with the therapy. Alliance subscales were also examined and several significant correlations were found among these as well. Theoretical, clinical, and training implications are discussed.