Clients’ experience of therapist-disclosure: Helpful and hindering factors and conditions

Abstract

In psychotherapy, the norm and expectation is for clients to self-disclose, thus disregarding and discouraging self-disclosure by therapists. This study aimed to investigate clients’ subjective experience of therapist disclosure, and in particular how clients interpret, appraise and react to therapist disclosure, using semi-structured interviews to gather data from eight research participants. By means of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of the data three basic themes were revealed: (1) perceived underlying conditions of the disclosure event, (2) disclosure type and (3) disclosure impacts. The findings indicate that the underlying conditions surrounding the therapist’s disclosure are the determinant factor as to how clients experience therapist disclosure, regardless of either the disclosure type or the impact of the disclosure on clients’ lives.