ABSTRACT
Second opinions are much more common in medicine than they are in psychotherapy. Sometimes the client will initiate the process of finding someone to offer a second opinion and sometimes it is at the therapist's behest. When effective, a single-session second opinion achieves the following: It helps the client decide whether or not they wish to engage with the therapeutic approach of their current therapist. It helps the client get unstuck with their current therapist. In attempting to help the client get unstuck in their current therapy, the second opinion therapist (SOT) needs to consider whether they are going to see the client and their current therapist together or separately. The purpose of the SOT giving the current therapist feedback is to help the current therapist to deepen their understanding of the client and the reason for the stuckness and to modify their behaviour towards the client, which hopefully breaks the stuckness.
