ABSTRACT
Therapist disclosure has increasingly been explored as a technique with therapeutic potential for the client. However, this is often in tension with ethics discourse that warns of boundary crossings and violations and favors a risk-management approach. Viewing therapist disclosure as a technique, this chapter advances the perspective that disclosures that are unhelpful can often be attributed to the therapist’s lack of clinical knowledge, skill, and judgment in its delivery rather than the technique itself. The author draws from her own research to provide empirically grounded examples of clients’ negative experiences of disclosure, illuminating how ineffective disclosures can be driven by a therapist’s personality or personal motives that overshadow a client focus. Therapist disclosure, involving attunement to clients’ therapy expectations and needs within an evolving therapy relationship, is promoted as a competency that can be cultivated, in part, through reflexivity. The author argues that disclosure as a competency should be included in practitioner training given the inevitability of therapist disclosure, the risks of non-disclosure, and disclosure’s general usefulness for clients in therapy.
