Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Novice Therapist Responsiveness: Description And Development, Max B. Wu

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

There is increasing empirical evidence that psychotherapy is very effective when therapists tailor interventions in ways that fit their clients’ difficulties and needs (Kramer, 2009; Snyder & Silberschatz, 2017), a concept that has been named “therapist responsiveness” in the psychotherapy literature (Bacal, 1985; Stiles, Honos-Webb, & Surko, 1998). However, the question of how therapists learn to be responsive rarely has been addressed in research (Hatcher, 2015). The central question of this study was, “How did you learn how to be responsive to clients as a novice therapist, and in what ways are you responsive?” Eleven graduate student therapist trainees were …