Therapist's self-disclosure in the context of online counseling at the Couple and Family Counseling Forum (Med.Over.Net)

Abstract

Therapist self-disclosure has come to the attention of researchers in recent decades and has become a widespread intervention in psychotherapy. Self-disclosure may relate to the sharing of information from the therapist's private life (intrapersonal disclosures) or to the therapist's experience with clients and the therapeutic relationship (interpersonal disclosures). In our research, we used a qualitative method thematic analysis to determine what content relational family therapists reveal as part of counselling in the Couple and Family Counselling Forum (part of the Med.Over.Net forum). We identified eight different content categories of self-disclosure. The most frequently used was a disclosure of counter-transference, the therapist's emotional response to the client's situation. Significant differences in the amount of self-disclosure were shown between the individual responses. The self-disclosure in the therapists' responses was consistent with the ethical guidelines that have emerged in the self-disclosure literature. This research opens the way for further reflection on the role and the ethical and procedural validity of the therapist's self-disclosure in various forms of psychotherapeutic and psychosocial help.