ABSTRACT
In the last ten years, two major reviews of research on mastery have been published. The fi rst was Master Therapists: Exploring Expertise in Therapy and Counseling by Thomas Skovholt and Len Jennings. Their book is a summary of their research on seasoned clinicians who had achieved mastery in the fi eld. The centerpiece of it was a study that they had conducted with acknowledged experts in counseling (and while they never published the names of the masters they interviewed, I have to wonder if any of the interviewees in this book were a part of this study, as each of these four seemed to certainly qualify for that distinction). Among the many noteworthy fi ndings on expertise that they reported, they discovered that “master therapists” were always learning (even if it wasn’t related to practice), and that they really enjoyed deliberately practicing their craft.
