The emotional experience and process of psychotherapists working with children of separated parents : a qualitative study

Abstract

The study is about the emotional experience and process of psychotherapists working with children of separated parents. The aim of the research is to find out the emotional experience of psychotherapists during therapy. This study was carried out by the use of a phenomenological approach, specifically semi-structured interviews since by this method more information was gained. Six psychotherapists were chosen by a purposive sample. The results obtained from the interviews show that psychotherapists experience different kind of emotions; mainly frustration, concern and worry and doubt and a mixture of different kind of emotions and additionally psychotherapists process their emotions through supervision and by keeping aware of their emotions throughout the sessions. Countertransference was also evident from the results as a process that all six psychotherapists experience.