Santa Clara University

Don't miss this Counseling Psychology Graduate Student Association Event!

12-5PM, February 27th, 2010
12-1PM, Pizza and Drinks
Benson Parlors B & C

RSVP at sbabbel@scu.edu

The Client As Active Self-Healer: Implications For Psychotherapy Practice
Despite the fact that many writers hold that it is clients who ultimately make psychotherapy work, the field has been “therapistcentric” in its focus on what therapists do. However, recently, attention has begun to turn to clients’ contributions to the success of psychotherapy. In this workshop I will review evidence suggesting that clients are not only important, but the major factor in making therapy work. They do this through their involvement, but more importantly through their active, creative, thoughtful and intelligent contributions to the process, as well as through their active efforts to operate on the therapy environment to make it work for them. Additionally, therapy does not necessarily work through changes that happen insession, but through clients’ active efforts to integrate and blend what they are learning in therapy with their lives, and their lives with therapy.

I will suggest that focusing more on the client’s active contributions leads to a small but significant shift in therapy practice. I will outline the implications of this shift, and how some approaches to therapy are already implementing this. I will also consider implications of this view for the current debate over how psychotherapy should be practiced in an evidence based fashion. Several experiential exercises will be utilized to illustrate the points being made.

Arthur C. Bohart, PhD, Professor Emeritus California State University Dominguez Hills; Faculty, Saybrook University. Dr. Bohart has published articles on psychotherapy integration, experiencing in psychotherapy, empathy, constructivism, couples therapy, and the role of the client as self-healer. He is the coeditor of Empathy Reconsidered: New Directions in Psychotherapy, and of two textbooks, Foundations of Clinical and Counseling Psychology and Personality.

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