Failure in psychotherapy: How psychotherapists experience and cope with failure in their therapeutic practice (results of the research)

This study aims at examining how psychotherapists experience and cope with failure in their therapeutic practice. We have explored the set of 100 psychotherapists, consisting of 55 females and 45 males, in total 48 psychologists, 29 physicians and 23 workers in helping professions, all between 25–64 years of age, of various psychotherapeutic approaches. Failure is an important emotional stress at the psychotherapist’s practice. Typical failures are client’s suicide, dropout and resignation from therapy, as well as deterioration of bodily symptoms, social relations and relations to oneself during the therapy. This perceived therapists’ failure tends to be connected with intense negative feelings of anger, anxiety, sorrow, guilt, helplessness and self-doubt. We have also found out that therapists have developed coping resources and adopted coping strategies that enable them to manage and cope with such situations actively and productively. Their beliefs, value system and faith are an important source of coping with failure and other stress in therapy. Reflection and social support in the form of supervision, intervision, assistance of colleagues or fellows or the training therapy itself rank among prevailing coping strategies.