Shaping psychotherapy trainees’ potential: insights from training program directors

The role of the therapist has received growing attention in psychotherapy research, suggesting that training effectiveness may also depend on the person of the trainees, with relevant implications in terms of candidate selection or tailoring training to the person. In the present study, we focused on how and how much psychotherapy training can be effective in fostering trainees’ characteristics associated with successful therapists and contrast trainees’ characteristics that could represent limitations as therapists. The aim was to explore training program directors’ perspectives on individual trainees’ limitations and strengths, and on the effectiveness of training in shaping successful therapists. To this aim, we interviewed 14 training program directors with different psychotherapy approaches. Audio recordings of these semi-structured interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using NVivo software. According to our findings, transversally to different psychotherapy approaches, trainees’ self-awareness and the ability to embrace uncertainty were recognized as the main characteristics of good trainees. Four training elements were fre- quently mentioned by directors as effective in shaping trainees’ development: experiential learning, the use of paradigm that pri- oritizes self-awareness (instead of technique-focused approaches), the centrality of supervision and inter-vision, the trainer-trainee relationship. These insights highlight the importance of trainees’ self-awareness and the ability to embrace uncertainty as potential personal variables that may influence the effectiveness of future psychotherapists and suggest giving attention to experiential learning and training relationships as crucial elements of psychotherapists’ development during the training.