The significance of the psychotherapeutic process: An analysis of clients' and psychotherapists’ perspectives

Abstract

Studying the perceptions of the therapists and the clients on the meaning of psychotherapy is important because through them one can grasp some of the realities of therapy that cannot be studied through conventional quantitative research. Reintroducing a phenomenological perspective may further ease our understanding of psychotherapy in general. In this study, the action of giving significance to one’s experience is used to describe the perceptions of the psychotherapists (N=137) and the clients (N=103). The analysis used in the study, a version of grounded theory research, revealed that when it comes to the significance given to therapy, psychotherapists and clients tend to have similar opinions. The categories found in the clients verbatim were self-knowledge, personal development, answer, help, healing and others and in therapists’ responses were: self-knowledge, healing, solution, personal development, change and others. The different themes were help for the clients and change for therapists. The difference in the analysed categories is a conceptual one, psychotherapists tending to be more idealistic in their meaning giving process than clients.