ABSTRACT
The existence of many alternate theories in any field of endeavor implies that none of them is adequate to the task at hand—the explanation and organization of the stable body of phenomena involved. Part of the difficulty in translating even partially correct theories into effective practice clearly lies with the training institutions themselves. More often than not they choose training and supervisory therapists on the basis of their academic, research, and theoretic contribution, ignoring to a large extent the effective professional therapist. The theories of practitioners who represent a variety of therapeutic and counseling approaches converge upon the central therapeutic ingredients of a “helping relationship.” The kind of incongruence that arises from the counselor’s or therapist’s own psychological disturbance is emphasized as highly detrimental by virtually every therapeutic approach since Freud’s early discovery and delineation of countertransference. There is no real alternative to genuineness in the psychotherapeutic relationship.
