The effect of therapist self-disclosure on patients' perceptions of empathy, competence and trust in an analogue psychotherapeutic interaction.

Psychodynamically oriented clinicians uniformly contraindicate the use of therapist self-disclosure, whereas practitioners disposed toward a humanistic-existential perspective often regard this practice as an essential condition of treatment. In the present study, 57 psychotherapy patients (aged 18–55 yrs) read 1 of 3 patient–therapist dialogs in which the degree of therapist self-disclosure was high, low, or nil. Ss completed the Relationship Inventory and Sorenson Relationship Questionnaire to measure perceived therapist empathy, competence, and trust. Findings confirm the prediction that greater therapist self-disclosure would be related to poorer evaluations of the therapist. Results question the use of self-disclosure as a psychotherapeutic technique and suggest that self-disclosure may adversely affect the perceptions on which the therapeutic alliance is based. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)