Integrative Psychotherapists experiences of proactive countertransference
This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis seeks to understand how Year 3/4 Integrative Psychotherapy trainees and qualified Integrative Psychotherapists work to support the beneficence of their clients when they experience proactive countertransference linked to their own early developmental trauma.
For the purposes of this study:
• Proactive countertransference refers to moments when a therapist’s healed, healing, or unhealed wounds are activated within the therapeutic relationship.
• Early developmental trauma is understood as relationally mediated, chronic, and cumulative disruptions to the developing sense of self arising from repeated failures of attunement and unmet relational needs.
The research seeks to understand the meanings that therapists attribute to these experiences and how they are made sense of in clinical practice.
Where possible, interviews will be conducted face-to-face to support my personal philosophy and favoured way of working. Should in-person meetings not be feasible, likely due to geographical differences, interviews will be conducted online via an end-to-end encrypted platform, ensuring both confidentiality, privacy and accessibility. Informed consent for audio recording will be sought from all participants, with the right to withdraw clearly stated.
I look to draw from graduates, and third or fourth year trainees on a relational developmental integrative psychotherapy training programmes (BACP and UKCP), who are not known to me. They will identify with having experienced early relational developmental trauma who have awareness and have worked on that trauma by accessing personal therapy, and can do so again if needed as part of their ethical self-care during the research process.
For information on how to take part, please see here.
To view the participant information sheet, please see here.
