| The present study was a survey of 81 practicing psychologists to investigate the content and impact of therapist self-reference. There were eight major research questions: (1) What percentage of a sample of psychotherapists would report using self-reference within the past two years? (2) Of those self-reference examples given, what percentage are self-disclosures and what percentage are self-involving statements? (3) What is the content of the therapist self-references? (4) Why do therapists use self-reference? (5) What consequences does the self-reference have for the client and/or the therapeutic relationship? (6) What therapist characteristics are significantly related to self-reference, content, intentions, and impact? (7) What client characteristics are significantly related to self-reference content, intentions, and impact? (8) What contextual variables are significantly related to self-reference content, intentions and impact?;Most of the 81 respondents reported using self-reference within the past two years (80.2%). The data suggest that there are no significant demographic differences between self-referencers and non self-referencers. Of the 65 respondents who gave examples of self-reference the majority reported incidents of self-disclosure (95.4%) versus incidents of self-involving behavior. The results yielded three categories for content of self-disclosure: family issues; personal, psychological and therapy experiences; and personal beliefs/attitudes/opinions. Four categories of reasons for self-reference emerged: universality/validation; relationship development, modeling and reality testing. Most of the respondents (75%) indicated that their self-reference had a favorable impact and only one respondent indicated a negative impact.;Bivariate analyses conducted to examine types of themes emerging from reported disclosures as a function of therapist, client and contextual variables yielded ten relationships significant at p ≤ .05. Only one therapist variable, gender, proved to be significant as it interacted with client gender. Client variables of gender and diagnoses were also significant at p ≤ .05. Contextual variables of who initiated the disclosure, content of disclosure, intention of the disclosure and timing of disclosure were also found to have significance. Implications for practice and research are discussed. |
