ABSTRACT
Therapy is very popular and that people are clamouring for an increase in its availability. Therapy involves a far greater degree of collaboration than does dentistry or, indeed, most medical procedures. A therapist must be highly attentive to what a client says but any pearls of wisdom will fall by the wayside if a client is not ready to receive them. B. Webb and colleagues found slight evidence that a therapist’s competence did matter when the problem was severe depression, and there is other evidence that competence is related to outcome, especially in cognitive behavioural therapy. Clients’ expectations can be broken down into what they anticipate will happen. In a study of long-term mainly psychodynamic therapy, clients and therapists rated the quality of their relationship as it changed over time, in some cases over 120 sessions. B. A. Farber had found that premature termination was the third greatest source of stress for a therapist, after a threat of suicide and hostility.
