Psychotherapist’s Own Traumatic Experience in the Field of His/Her Professional Empathy: The Phenomenon of Empathic Involvement

Abstract

The present study is devoted to the significance of personal experience for the psychotherapist’s empathy in the context of her/his professional activity. As a result of processing interviews (N=14) using the grounded theory methodology, we reveal and describe the phenomenon of the empathic involvement of the therapist that occurs in the intersection of his/her own traumatic experience and the client’s experience. The structure of the phenomenon, contextual conditions and causal reasons for its occurrence, the psychotherapist’s action/interaction strategies with the phenomenon of empathic involvement and the consequences of these strategies are analyzed. Various forms of empathic involvement are identified: when the client’s experience is similar to the experience of the therapist’s trauma and when the client provokes a response as, rather, the source of the trauma. The analysis of the interviews shows that empathic involvement places the therapist not only in a situation of sympathetic understanding of the client but also in the area of his/her own traumarelated experiences, including the process of giving the meaning and significance to the professional activity.

Keywords

• empathy
• professional empathy
• psychotherapy
• trauma
• experience
• experiencing trauma
• grounded theory