David Orlinsky

• PhD (Chicago); PhD hon (Oslo)
• Professor Emeritus at University of Chicago

Background and Method The experiences of 454 psychotherapy trainees when providing therapy to patients were surveyed in a multinational sample largely from European countries, as part of the collaborative SPRISTAD study, using established measures of trainees' Healing Involvement (HI) and Stressful Involvement (SI). Results The results of cross‐se...

Objective Psychotherapist training programmes have arguably a most impactful intervention on the field of psychotherapy, shaping the kinds of therapists their graduates become. Yet, little is known about the structural and organisational similarities and differences of these key learning environments in an international context. Method Ninety psyc...

While psychotherapists are trained to improve their clients’ quality of life, little work has examined the quality of life experienced by psychotherapist trainees themselves. Yet their life satisfactions and stresses would plausibly affect both their ability to learn new skills and conduct psychotherapy. Therefore, in the Society for Psychotherapy...

Objective: Psychotherapists’ experiences of emotional burdens and distress in their personal lives can compromise their professional functioning, as well as undermine their own wellbeing. To identify preventative measures, we need more knowledge about the personal and situational risk factors that contribute to therapists’ emotional burdens. Method...

Objectives: Description of the qualifications of psychotherapy-training candidates in Austria at the beginning of their training. Methods: Psychotherapists in training in Austria were interviewed at the beginning of their training concerning their socio-demographic background and prior education. These background data were collected using the Train...

Objective: The personal self of psychotherapists, that is, experiences of self in close personal relationships and its association with therapists' individual and professional attributes is explored. The study aimed to: (a) describe therapists' self-ratings on specific self-attributes; (b) determine their dimensionality; (c) explore demographic, p...

Background Personal characteristics and relational skills represent central aspects of the psychotherapist's work, and yet, little is still known about them in the context of psychotherapy training. Objective This paper presents a preliminary exploration of the self‐concepts of relational skills in psychotherapy trainees. Changes in the self‐conce...

The present work provides preliminary insight into the training situation for psychotherapists in Austria. On the basis of a survey of candidates at the beginning of their training, the requirements of psychotherapeutic training candidates in Austria are considered. Psychotherapists in training were interviewed at the beginning of their training co...

Abstract Background: This article presents key findings of two major empirical studies of psy- chotherapist and counsellor development. Both aimed to advance knowledge of vari- ations in professional development and better understand the complexity of formative influences. Methodology: The Minnesota Study of Therapist and Counsellor Development and...

Objectives: Description of the qualifications of psychotherapy-training candidates in Aus- tria at the beginning of their training. Methods: Psychotherapists in training in Austria were interviewed at the beginning of their training concerning their socio-demographic background and prior education. These background data were collected using the Tra...

Wie trägt die Psychotherapieforschung der letzten Jahrzehnte zum Verständnis des Begriffes und der Bedeutung von Würde in der Psychotherapie bei? Über welche Fähigkeiten und Attribute verfügen angehende und praktizierende Psychotherapeuten, um bei ihren Patienten Würde wahrzunehmen, zu erkennen und zu beachten – oder auch zu missachten? Aus Sicht d...

Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt einen ersten Einblick in die Ausbildungssituation für Psychotherapeuten in Österreich dar. Auf Grundlage einer Befragung von Kandidaten zu Beginn ihrer Ausbildung werden die Voraussetzungen von Psychotherapieausbildungskandidaten in Österreich betrachtet. Psychotherapeuten wurden am Beginn ihrer Ausbildung in Hinblick...

Background Therapist characteristics seem to be a key factor in clinical effectiveness. Trainees’ personal and professional background, motivation, and interpersonal style have been shown to deserve attention in previous research concerning therapist development and warrant further study due to their potential implications for psychotherapy trainin...

Our purpose was to investigate the internal consistency of Western oriented counselling questionnaires in a sample of Tibetan Lamas, and thereafter to investigate these Lamas´ self-perceptions and practice as spiritual counsellors and thus adding to our understanding of what might be common and specific factors in counseling practice across culture...

Insights from the study of literature can inform and clarify concepts to guide psychotherapy practice and research. The author offers instances from narrative fiction (Durrell's Alexandria Quartet) and poetry (Hopkins, Baudelaire) to illustrate how the formulation of experience in words that are evocative (vs. ordinary), original (vs. trite), and p...

The helping professions of psychotherapy and counselling involve a process of lifelong learning and professional development. Multiple influences may serve as pathways to professional development and growth. The study explored practitioner perceptions of a range of influences on their development as therapists. The Development of Psychotherapists C...

This study presents a pilot contribution to the new collaborative, multinational study of psychotherapy trainee development that was undertaken by the Society for Psychotherapy Research Interest Section on Therapist Training and Development (see Orlinsky, Strauss, Rønnestad, et al., 2015). Although the main project is longitudinal in design, this p...

Objective: Patients' processing of psychotherapy between sessions ("inter-session process" (ISP)) has been repeatedly shown to be related to outcome. The aim of this study was to compare ISP characteristics of cognitive-behavioral vs. psychodynamic psychotherapy in the treatment of anorexia nervosa (AN) and their relation to outcome. Methods: Da...

Objective: The "inter session process" (ISP) is defined as therapy-related conscious thoughts, memories, and emotions that patients and therapists experience between psychotherapy sessions. It indicates how the participants process and use treatment. The main aim of this study is to describe the ISP characteristics of patients in outpatient treatm...

A sample of 1,102 psychotherapists aged 60 years and older was selected from the multinational database of the Society for Psychotherapy Research Collaborative Research Network. These older therapists were first described in terms of gender, generation, years in practice, civil status, professional background, and theoretical orientation. To compar...

Psychotherapy process research examines the interactions and experiences of patients and therapists in psychosocial mental health treatments. Early psychotherapy researchers differentiated between ‘outcome’ studies that focus on the impact of treatment on patients, and ‘process’ studies that examine the events of therapy. Process studies typically...

Process research began with therapist-reported case studies describing therapeutic practice but conflating data and analysis. Audio recordings of therapy shifted the focus towards a third-party perspective, avoiding previous bias but marginalising therapy participants who alone can supply first-hand reports of the process. Today, both patients’ and...

Objective: The therapeutic alliance is a well-established predictor of psychotherapy outcome, yet much research has shown that therapists' and patients' views of the alliance can diverge substantially. Therapists systematically underestimate their patients' perceived level of alliance, and the correlation between therapist and patient estimates of...

Research shows psychotherapists espousing different theoretical approaches differ in mentality (e.g., cognitive styles, beliefs and epistemologies) and personality (e.g., neuroticism). However, studies have not investigated the association between professional relational style prescribed by therapists' theoretical orientations and therapists' manne...

In this article, questions raised in the personal memoirs by Geller (2013) and McWilliams (2013) about their own experiences in psychotherapy are examined using relevant data about psychoanalytic and other therapists collected as part of the multi-year international study of therapist development conducted by the Society for Psychotherapy Research...

Psychologists are by far the biggest group of professional psychotherapists in Denmark, and this article presents data from two samples of psychologist psychotherapists collected at an interval of 15 years. The subjects in both samples responded to the Development of Psychotherapists Common Core Questionnaire (DPCCQ). This study aims to give a firs...

The aim of this international study is to examine the nature, correlates, and perceived determinants of development among professional psychotherapists from different countries and cultures at all career levels, trained in different professions and theoretical orientations. Psychotherapeutic development was conceptualized and assessed from several...

Practice as a psychotherapist can be both rewarding and challenging, generating a need for therapists to reflect on their professional strengths and vulnerabilities. As part of a larger international study of psychotherapists, information was gathered from 250 therapists in India using the Development of Psychotherapists Common Core Questionnaire (...

Abstract We examined potential predictors of therapists' "Stressful Involvement" (SI) among variables reflecting the psychotherapy process, therapist characteristics, patients' symptom severity or context variables (treatment setting). Ninety-eight sequences from individual psychodynamic treatments conducted by 26 therapists were studied. Data were...

The time has come to take stock and make a reckoning: to review the main findings reported in this book, and to reflect on what they show about the nature of therapeutic work and professional development. We start this process, first, by summarizing our key findings about therapists' experiences of therapeutic work. Then, we revisit the main points...

During the days-long or week-long intervals between their therapy sessions, patients typically recollect, reflect on, practice, and imaginatively elaborate on experiences they had during sessions with their therapists. These "intersession experiences" (IE) have been studied for some time with the Intersession Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) in Germa...

This article offers both a practice-friendly review of research on therapists' personal therapy and a new study of personal psychotherapy among 3,995 psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, and nurses in 6 English-speaking countries. The prevalence of personal therapy as it relates to professional discipline, theoretical orientati...

Background: There are many professional psychotherapists, but no psychotherapy profession. The psychotherapists’ professions vary between countries, the most frequent being psychiatry and clinical psychology.Aim: As these professions have different basic training and also may be impacted differently by other factors, we wanted to study potential di...

Psychotherapists are the trained professionals to whom large numbers of individuals in our society turn for help when they experience significant distress in their personal lives. We know a considerable amount about the effectiveness and process of psychotherapy after decades of research, but we still know relatively little about the trained profes...

• Based on a 15-year study of psychotherapists' experiences and careers, this book is written equally for practicing therapists, clinical educators, and mental health researchers. The authors and their collaborators collected richly detailed reports from nearly 5,000 psychotherapists of all career levels, professions, and theoretical orientations i...

Treatment in bulimia nervosa is challenging, with rates of successful treatments for only about 50% of all patients. This study aimed to identify predictors of outcome through secondary analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial that compared inpatient and day hospital treatment for bulimia. Process measures included assessments of patients'...

Psychiatrists (n=26) and mental health nurses (n=18) engaged in the practice of psychotherapy were surveyed regarding their perceptions and engagement in professional development activities. Collaborative Research Network's (CRN) methodology was followed, and comparisons with CRN samples from Canada and the United States of America (USA) were under...

The “Generic Model of Psychotherapy” was initially presented 25 years ago (Orlinsky & Howard, 1984) and was conceived as a transtheoretical frame for integrating the varied empirical findings of hundreds of studies relating therapeutic process to outcome that had appeared during the previous 3 decades into a coherent body of knowledge (Orlinsky & H...

This paper offers a brief overview of research on the impact of therapists' professional backgrounds on psychotherapeutic process and outcome as an introduction to the presentations in this special issue on the psychotherapeutic professions. Dans la littérature spécialisée, on trouve relativement peu de recherches sur les professions des psychothér...

New Zealand counsellors (n = 123) were surveyed as an extension of a multinational study of therapist development. Comparisons were made with samples of Canadian and US counsellors. New Zealand counsellors perceived themselves to have developed in skill and knowledge across their careers, and reported high levels of ongoing development at all stage...

The experience of "being held in the mind of another" is a powerful metaphor for any relationship and is particularly pertinent to the therapist-patient bond. This study explores the frequency of therapists' thoughts and feelings about their patients between sessions (intersession experiences) and the relation of these to therapists' professional a...

The established paradigm in psychotherapy research is oriented to the dominant bio-medical research paradigm, which is too narrow and decontextualized to generate realistic (and thus truly scientific) studies in our field. The central assumptions of this paradigm are critically discussed and an expansion is suggested that can provide a more adequat...

Résumé Dans cet essai, l’auteur fait part de ses hésitations quant à la valeur d’une recherche en psychothérapie basée sur un paradigme ou modèle standard qui, par des procédures « manualisées » aléatoires, tend à réifier les personnes (patients et chercheurs) et rétrécir, selon lui, la vision des phénomènes censés être étudiés. Ce modèle est confo...

In this article, we focus on the theoretical orientations of Spanish psychotherapists with reference to the concepts of integration and eclecticism associated respectively with the cultural patterns of modernity and postmodernity. Data are reported from 179 Spanish therapists who responded to the Development of Psychotherapists Common Core Question...

Als Vorschau auf ihr Buch mit dem Titel How psychotherapists develop (2005) geben die Autoren Orlinsky und Rnnestad hier einen kurzen berblick zu den Hauptergebnissen ihrer umfassenden internationalen Studie ber Fragen, wie Psychotherapeuten ihre Arbeit erleben, wie ihre Praxiserfahrung ihre berufliche Entwicklung beeinflusst und welche weiteren Fa...

Intersession process in psychotherapy refers to the thoughts, memories, and feelings about each other and about their therapy sessions that participants experience during the intervals between sessions. This study compared the intersession process experienced by patients who had been diagnosed with severe borderline personality disorders (BPD) with...

This study describes a sample of 538 South Korean psychotherapists using data collected as part of a collaborative international study on the development of psychotherapists (Orlinsky et al., 1999; Bae and Orlinsky, 2004). In particular, it examines female therapists, with regard to the unique cultural and social aspects of this particular group, s...

The author reflects on the circumstances of his becoming a psychotherapist and meditates on their meaning. He notes the effect on his survival through childhood of his grandparents' emigration from Europe and the influence of his close-knit family on his personal needs and values. He then reflects on his early vocational interests; the transformati...

Psychotherapeutic work is a therapist's daily occupation, source of livelihood, and personal professional commitment. It involves listening and talking to patients, forming relationships with them, and exercising on their behalf the specialized training, skills, and capacities that therapists have acquired and refined over time. Because professiona...

The time has come to take stock and make a reckoning: to review the main findings reported in this book, and to reflect on what they show about the nature of therapeutic work and professional development. We start this process, first, by summarizing our key findings about therapists' experiences of therapeutic work. Then, we revisit the main points...

This study investigates professional autonomy as experienced by psychotherapists in Korea and in the United States using data collected as part of a collaborative international study of the development of psychotherapists (Orlinsky et al. (1999). Psychotherapy Research, 9(2), 127–153; Orlinsky & Rønnestad, (2005). How psychotherapists develop: A st...

Psychology and its practitioners have historically been seen as part of the process of secularization of modern culture. However, recent research has challenged this stereotype. This article contributes to the literature on the religious and spiritual character of psychotherapists by using a version of the Development of Psychotherapists Common Cor...

We do not know much about how patients internalize, remember or use psychotherapeutic experiences between psychotherapy sessions and how they use them for change. What happens with in-session-experiences after a session ("inter-session-process") is of main importance for outcome. The inter-session-process describes the work on psychotherapy between...

Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird wiederum auf der Grundlage der Handlungstheorie von Parsons und Shils (1951), die die Ausgangskonstrukte des sozialen, kulturellen, Persönlichkeits- und organismischen Systems als flexibles Netzwerk von empirischen Konzepten enthält, der Kontext von Psychotherapie beleuchtet und eine Verbindung zum generischen Modell...

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein allgemeiner konzeptueller Rahmen vorgestellt, der die Analyse der Struktur und der Funktionen solcher komplexen Systeme, wie das menschliche Interaktionsverhalten und die Interaktionserfahrung—z. B. in der Psychotherapie—, ermöglicht. Auf der Grundlage der Handlungstheorie von Parsons und Shils (1951) wird durch...