“Feeling at home” or not? A qualitative investigation into therapists’ experienced congruence between their personal self and their professional role

Abstract

Research suggests that conducting psychotherapy successfully involves an integration of professional and personal knowledge on the part of the psychotherapist. The concept of congruence has been used to convey an adaptive fit between the two, but less is known about how this integration is experienced by psychotherapists in their actual therapeutic work. Through in-depth interviews we aimed to explore how therapists experience their personal self as related to their professional role. Sixteen psychotherapists participated in the study, each interviewed twice. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis yielded the superordinate theme: “Feeling at home” in one’s professional domain. Three constituent themes conveyed both congruence and dissonance between the personal and professional domains: 1) Experienced correspondence between the psychotherapist’s professional and personal selves; 2) How handling personal challenges is reflected in their work as psychotherapists; and 3) How personal issues are experienced as disruptive in relation to the psychotherapist’s professional role. The findings both consolidate and expand on the view of congruence as a predominantly useful state by adding experiential detail to recent models of therapist development. The main implication is suggested to be the need to develop and maintain an active awareness of the potential tension and/or fusion between one’s personal and professional self.