Systemic Individual Therapy: Therapeutic Change from the Perspective of Clients and Therapists

ABSTRACT

Therapeutic change is a well-studied construct in psychotherapy process and outcome studies, providing the basis for how psychotherapy practices are effective in individuals wellbeing. The current study explores the experiences of therapists and clients regarding how therapeutic change is experienced in systemic individual therapy. 12 therapists (1 men, 11 women) and 12 clients (2 men, 10 women) were recruited as participants from two training centers. Both therapists’ and clients’ experiences are investigated with semi-structured interviews using thematic analysis (TA). Results revealed three main themes for clients: “Sense-making the Problems Through Relational Awareness”, “Acceptance in Relationships”, and “Manifesting the Differentiated Self in Relationship.” Regarding therapists’ perspective, the results yielded three main themes: “Going Beyond One-to-one Relationship in Therapy”, “Increasing Relational Awareness”, “Shift in Clients’ Attitudes Towards Boundaries with Significant Others.”. The themes were discussed in the context of the systems theory literature, limitations, strengths, future research directions, and clinical implications.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Therapeutic change
• systems theory
• systemic individual therapy
• individual therapy
• therapists’ perspective
• clients’ perspective
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our very great appreciation to Itır Erkan, MA for her support in data analysis process. She provided significant support for our research for helping us creating a roadmap. We also thank Gülşah Gülebakan, MA for her assistance in organizing interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

“The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to protect confidentiality of participants and accommodating regulations of data sharing agreement of the institution of the authors but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.”

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

University Ethic Commitee

Ethical approval was obtained from Ozyegin University Research Ethics Committee (REC) with approval number of 2021/06/06.