The therapist’s factors: attachment and personality

The empirical literature on therapists’ individual differences is modest and still in its infancy. However, some evidence suggests that attachment insecurity may render the therapists vulnerable to reactivation of their-own attachment-related worries or defences: they tend to have lower overall level of alliance quality and lacking countertransference management capacities (Mohr et al., 2005). Moreover, research in therapist’s personality seems basically unexplored despite its undeniable clinical utility. The aim of this preliminary study is to investigate the influence of therapist’s attachment style and personality on factors related to therapeutic relationship, such as therapeutic alliance and transference/countertransference patterns (Gelso, 2014). The sample consists of N=20 novice therapists recruited from various Italian associations of dynamic psychotherapy. Each clinician has been interviewed using the Clinical Diagnostic Interview (Westen, Muderrisoglu, 2003) followed by an evaluation with the AAI (George et al., 1996) and SWAP-200 (Westen, Shedler, 1999). They are also asked to complete: a) the Therapist Response Questionnaire (Zittel, Westen, 2003) to assess their emotional response to one patient in therapy; b) the Psychotherapy Relationship Questionnaire (Bradley et al., 2005) to measure transference patterns expressed by the same patient toward them; and c) the Working Alliance Inventory-T (Horvath, Greenberg, 1989). Results show a prevalence of securely attached and high level of personality functioning therapists, both related to a positive average quality of the components of therapeutic relationship. However, a general effect of clinicians’ insecure attachment style and personality disturbances was found, especially on therapists’ emotional response. These findings are comprised in a broader research which aims to extend knowledge on the “therapists’ effects”, one of the most important emerging topics in psychotherapy research (Lambert, 2013).