Plenary 6: The Emotionally Responsive Therapist in Family Therapy Practice

Plenary Description

Psychotherapy research suggests that differences in therapeutic outcome are not primarily explained by differences between treatment models, but also by differences between therapists. Effective therapists are particularly skilled at building strong therapeutic alliances, responding to their clients’ experiences and adjusting their approach when the therapeutic process requires it. In family therapy, however, responsive attunement is especially complex: the therapist must relate to several family members at once, attend to the relationships between them and remain sensitive to what unfolds in the here and now of the session.

This plenary lecture explores the person of the therapist as an essential part of family therapy practice. Emotions are not understood solely as private experiences that individuals regulate on their own, but also as relational processes that are transmitted, amplified, soothed and carried between people. Family therapists therefore contribute to the emotional regulation of the family, while simultaneously being emotionally affected by the family process themselves.

The therapist’s central task is not to remain emotionally detached, nor to react impulsively to what the family evokes. Instead, therapists need to find a position of appropriate discomfort: sufficiently involved to be moved and responsive, while remaining able to reflect on their own experience. The therapist’s inner dialogue makes it possible to notice emotional and bodily responses, consider how they may reflect the family process and decide how they can be used constructively in the therapeutic conversation.

Using clinical examples, the lecture will illustrate how therapists can move between observing family interactions, participating in emotional co-regulation and reflecting on their own responses. Particular attention will be given to enactment, alliance ruptures, emotional vulnerability and the use of the therapist’s feelings to create space for experiences that have not yet found words. The lecture argues that effective family therapy depends not only on what therapists know or do, but also on how they use themselves as responsive, reflective and dialogical partners.

Biography

Prof Peter Rober is, first and foremost, a therapist, working with families. Furthermore he is a professor in Clinical Psychology at the Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies, Faculty of Medicine, University of Leuven, Belgium. He is also responsible for for Context – Center of Marital and Family Therapy at UPC KU Leuven.​

Prof Rober's primary research interests focus is on the family therapeutic process. In particular he is interested in the therapist's inner dialogue and in silences in families.