ABSTRACT
Therapist self-disclosure (TSD) has long frequented the counseling and psychotherapy literature as a subject of considerable and even growing controversy. Research suggests it occurs more frequently than what might ordinarily be assumed, is a preferred alternative to full non-disclosure, and is at least passively if not generally accepted by most practitioners as an intervention in professional psychotherapy. Within this chapter is an outline of the text in its entirety. Overview, clinical factor, vulnerability, responding to client inquiry, clinical challenge, and implications for practice chapters are discussed in the areas of research they cover, the ways in which key points converge, and how the sum total of research and therapist/researcher perspectives should inform the research-informed practitioner’s conceptualization of scenarios in which TSD feels like it may be appropriate and helpful to clients. Thus, the purpose of this first chapter is to demonstrate the necessity of advancing into a more critical and clinically useful discussion of how aspects of the research should inform practitioners’ decision-making process in such scenarios necessarily of a high-intensity, high-risk, and/or beneficial nature. So doing is advanced as a methodology helping to balance the therapist’s attention to individual and empirical factors, which may in turn be most appropriate and helpful to clients.
