The issue of therapist self-disclosure is one of the main research focuses, and research on the subject includes qualitative and quantitative approaches (Audet, 2011; Audet & Everall, 2010; Berg, Antonsen, & Binder, 2016; Farber, 2006; Hanson, 2005; Hill et al, 2014; Levitt et al, 2016; Somers et al, 2014; Ziv-Beiman, 2013).
Our research on therapist self-disclosure in therapy is based on the Institute's database and compares the effects of immediate and non-immediate therapist self-disclosure with the effect of therapist avoidance of self-disclosure, while taking into account patient variables.
The first article based on this data was published this year in the journal Psychotherapy Research:
Ziv-Beiman, S., Keinan, G., Livneh, E., Malone, PS, & Shahar, G. (2016). Immediate therapist self-disclosure bolsters the effect of brief integrative psychotherapy on psychiatric symptoms and the perceptions of therapists: A randomized clinical trial. Psychotherapy Research,. doi: 10.1080/10503307.2016.1138334
Initial findings indicate that among high-symptom patients, symptomatic improvement is enhanced when the therapist uses immediate disclosure regarding his or her feelings toward the patient, the treatment, and the therapeutic relationship. It was also found that patients rated therapists who disclosed immediate disclosure more highly, and that therapists who used immediate self-disclosure and non-immediate disclosure (concerning the therapist's life outside of treatment) rated themselves and their work more positively than therapists who did not disclose.
After examining the impact of exposure types on symptomatic improvement and patient and therapist evaluation of the therapist and treatment, our current studies on the effects of therapist self-exposure focus on examining:
The moderating effect of patient personality variables on the set of relationships between therapist self-disclosure and patient improvement throughout treatment.
The effect of the therapist's self-disclosure on the congruence between the therapist's and the patient's assessment of the therapeutic session experience and its outcomes.
Comparative qualitative analysis of immediate and non-immediate self-disclosure events of the therapist across dimensions of the content of the exposure, its goals, and its effects – the analysis of the exposure events and data processing has been completed and we are in the stages of writing the results.
Examining the self-disclosure patterns of therapists at various stages of treatment – this is done by analyzing exposure events in all 12 therapeutic sessions of two patients in the non-immediate exposure group in the research database - one representing successful treatment and the other unsuccessful treatment.
Examining the effect of the therapist's self-exposure on the results of the first session, combining a qualitative analysis of exposure events in the first session with an examination of the effect of exposure on the outcome measures of the session.
