ABSTRACT
This chapter reports the methodology of a research project based on and including a review of almost a thousand texts and more than twenty years of learning and supervised practice, as clinician and supervisor in the psychotherapeutic professions, on the nature of the therapeutic relationship. Following a pilot study of five years, the findings are reported in a 165,000-word document which encompasses poetry, personal experience, many textual extracts of theory or therapeutic dialogue, other research reports, theoretical considerations, clinical reflections, syllabus constructions - a postmodernist assemblage which nonetheless attempts coherence, validity and reliability. The findings have also been tested in the field, for example by (a) providing the framework for at least one four-year psychotherapy training course from which the first students have recently graduated by external assessment and (b) an independent psychotherapy accreditation process by a case study submission. It is argued that clinical practice or supervision should be inseparable from research - particularly qualitative research in psychology.
