Volume 18, Issue 2
Therapist's Personal Style and Theory of Mind
Abstract
The importance of the therapeutic alliance as a predictive factor in evaluating the success of psychotherapy suggests a need to enlarge the theoretical embodiement of both therapist and patient's variables, and how they influence on therapeutic alliance (Corbella and Botella, 2003). One very influencing variable is the Therapist's Personal Style, which has been defined as a group of particular conditions that can drive a therapist to perform in a singular way (Fernández-Álvarez, 1998). These are the common characteristics that each therapist brings to his/her task as a result of his/her peculiar personality, beyond the professional awareness and all specific requirements demanded for any therapeutical intervention. This article underlines the contributions of the theory of the mind in the psychotherapeutic field, specifically concerning the Therapist's Personal Style. An optimal development of this theory in the therapist's mind makes much more easy to understand how the patient can store and process information, thoughts and behavior; it can also bring a guess on the patients actions in front of certain situations. New approaches are explained in this proposal for a better performance in the therapeutic alliance.
Keywords
therapist's personal style, therapeutic alliance, theory of mind