Psychotherapy is a psychological treatment therapy in which the therapist talks to the client who wants personal growth, seeks happiness, and solves long-standing problems. Sometimes unhealthy early connections that have been part of a person's life have a negative impact on their perceptions of the world and how individuals feel themselves. Years of undesirable life experiences have reinforced this belief. In some cases, in addition to psychotherapy, environmental problems such as an unfulfilling career, an unpleasant relationship, or financial stress need to be taken into consideration (Hooley et al., 2021 p. 574).
It's a one and one interaction and therapeutic alliance are very important for both the client and therapist. The main key elements of the therapeutic alliance are a sense of working collaboratively on the problem, an agreement between client and therapist about goals, the affective bond between client and therapist, and clear communication (Hooley et al., 2021 p. 576). The therapeutic relationship develops as a result of the client and brings to the therapy setting, including the therapist. Psychotherapy's success typically hinges on if the therapeutic relationship between the patient and the therapist is an effective working alliance (Hooley et al., 2021).
Self-disclosure is defined as the therapist's sharing during treatment sessions, information that falls into four categories and that is training and practice information, personal life circumstances, experiences, attitudes and perceptions, personal reactions to and feelings about the client, and admissions of mistakes made in the therapy. Self-discloser is considered a very important aspect of psychotherapy because it is through listening to the experiences of clients that educators and clinicians will better understand the utility of therapist self-disclosure and become more sensitive to its impact (Wells, 1994). There are positive and negative effects of self-disclosure in the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client. The effect of self-discloser is referred to as a reciprocal nature relationship and when the therapist reveals his/her personal information leads to encouraging the client into disclosing her own information. A study was conducted by the author Wells through interviews with 15 adult participants. After the end of the interview, participants were asked if self discloser by the therapist was a negative or positive outcome with respect to trust and confidence. Three participants reported that there was low trust and confidence in their therapist but on the other hand, five participants reported a high positive relationship because there was high trust and confidence in their therapist (Wells, 1994). “The ‘orthodox’ psychoanalytic position is that therapists should be like a mirror to their clients, conducting therapy within a strictly neutral frame, from which any deviation, including self-disclosure, is inherently incorrect and unethical,” said the author Hason. The author thinks that the negative is an unethical aspect of self-disclosure from a therapist in a therapeutic alliance. Some more authors also think that in some cases the therapist should reveal information about her/his own self when the views do not match on certain emotional and sensitive issues like sexual orientation (Hanson, 2005).
One example of a therapeutic alliance of personal life circumstances, experiences, attitudes, perceptions, and personal reactions to and feelings about the client is the film “Dear Zindagi” an Indian, Hindi film directed in 2016 by Gauri Shinde. Shahrukh Khan was the therapist and Alia Bhatt was the client in this film. Alia Bhatt was suffering from insomnia as soon as she had a breakup with her boyfriend and an early negative, unhappy connection with her family. The scene of the self-disclosing of a therapist was when Alia Bhatt was hesitant to share her breakup story about her boyfriend but when Shahrukh Khan shared his marital life story, it resulted in opening up to share her problems. This was a positive effect because this led Alia Bhatt to share all her personal information and it helped the therapist Sharukh Khan to understand the situation and build trust. At the end of the film, the therapeutic alliance worked to come over the problem that was insomnia, she forgives her parents for leaving her alone in childhood, and she was able to change her behavior. But repeated self-disclosure of personal information by Sharukh khan in the therapeutic alliance led to negative effects as Alia Bhatt fall in love with him.
In therapeutic alliance, Boundary violations are very important because it helps the therapist not cross the boundary of unethical harm to the client. A particular kind of therapeutic damage relies on what “Boundary violations” are so named. At this point, the therapist behaves in a way that abuses the patient's trust or participates in actions that are incredibly inappropriate, like taking the sufferer to supper and presenting him or her with presents). The highly unethical conduct is an example of a sexual relationship between therapist and client or sexual attraction feeling (Hooley et al., 2021 p. 579).
The purpose of disclosure, according to therapists, is to strengthen the therapeutic partnership, develop trust, and give the client more control therapeutic alliance. The therapist helps the client feel more connected to the human experience and less alone by discussing their own personal experiences or feelings. In the present investigation, several clients said that they felt linked to the therapist and accepted by them the revelation (Wells, 1994). Therefore therapeutic alliance with the client and therapist is important with respect to of self-disclosure personal information.
References
Wells, T. L. (1994). Therapist self‐disclosure: Its effects on clients and the treatment relationship. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 65(1), 23–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377319409517422
Hooley, J. M., Nock, M., & Butcher, J. N. (2021). Abnormal psychology. Pearson Education Limited
Hanson, J. (2005). Should your lips be zipped? how therapist self-disclosure and non-disclosure affect clients. Counseling and Psychotherapy Research, 5(2), 96–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441690500226658
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