The Therapy Relationship in Counselling & Psychotherapy

The Key to Good Therapy Outcomes

Recent research has shown that the most important factor, or predictor of therapeutic success, is the therapy relationship that is created between the client and the therapist (Lambert, 2013 & Wampold & Imel, 2015) rather than the model of therapy in itself.

What this means is that the type of therapy (for example Psychoanalysis, CBT Therapy or any other Counselling approach) is SECONDARY to the quality of the Therapy Relationship.

Of course, if you can create an effective therapy relationship and use a highly developed therapeutic tool such as our Traceformental CBT programme then client outcomes will generally be very good.

Key Features of the Therapy Relationship

Carl Rogers, founder of the ‘humanistic’ (person-centred) approach to psychotherapy, suggested that the key elements of the therapy relationship are:

1. Unconditional Positive Regard

The therapist accepts and supports the client with whatever they say or do in a non-judgemental way.

This is crucial as one of the factors most likely to prevent a person presenting themselves for therapy is that they will be negatively judged for something they have done.

2. Empathy

Empathy is the ability of the therapist to understand (or feel) what the client is experiencing from within their frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another person’s position.

3. Congruence

Congruence is the authentic quality of the therapist to be who they really are within the therapy relationship.

This often means being able to share common experiences and being able to disclose personal information without the artificial restrictions imposed by some ‘governing bodies’ who state that therapist should be ‘blank slates’ within therapy.