Researching therapist emotions and countertransference Original Research Article

The study of therapist emotions is discussed with emphasis on its centrality to clinical practice and its relationship to countertransference. The paper describes dilemmas in researching therapist emotions (e.g., whether therapists can and will report their emotions; what emotions are), examples of key findings from research studies (e.g., therapist emotions vary based on patient diagnoses; therapist emotions cluster into meaningful categories), and 8 suggestions to improve future research (e.g., relate therapist emotions to real-life clinical phenomena; do not assume an emotion is “positive” or “negative”). The study of therapist emotions is concluded to be a fruitful area of research that needs refinement in theory and methods to improve on more simplistic prior studies.