ABSTRACT
Multiple and converging sources of evidence indicate that the person of the psychotherapist is inextricably intertwined with the outcome of psychotherapy, There is a dawning recognition, really a re-awakening, that the therapist him or herself is the focal process of change. Second only to the severity of the client’s symptomatology, the psychotherapist-not theory, not technique-is the most powerful determinant of clinical improvement. ‘The inescapable fact of the matter is that the therapist is a person, however much he may strive to make himself an instrument of his patient’s treatment’ (Orlinsky and Howard 1977: 567).
