Solicited and Unsolicited Therapist Advice inPsychodynamic Psychotherapy: Is it Advised?

ABSTRACT

Although therapists often provide advice in psychotherapy, we have minimal empirical evidence about its effect. For the current study, we examined the antecedents and consequences of solicited and unsolicited advice in individual psychodynamic psychotherapy for 98 adult clients and 30 doctoral student therapists. In solicited advice events, therapists were more likely to give advice when there was high antecedent client collaboration; clients sought more outside-of-therapy advice when antecedent client collaboration was high and more therapy-related advice when antecedent client collaboration was low; subsequent client collaboration was low when therapists gave advice and when the advice was therapy-related; therapists who were anxiously attached were more likely to give advice to clients who were anxiously attached, whereas therapists who were less anxiously attached were more likely to give advice to clients who were less anxiously attached; therapists were more likely to give advice when therapists or clients had lower attachment avoidance. For unsolicited advice, client collaboration decreased after advice was given, and therapists who were anxiously attached were less likely to give advice to clients who were anxiously attached. We concluded that psychodynamic therapists should be cautious about giving advise and should be aware of how their own and their client’s attachment styles influence their advice-giving behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Advice-giving
• psychotherapy process and outcome
• attachment style
• client and therapist factors

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to the clients and therapists in the Maryland Psychotherapy Clinic and Research Lab at the University of Maryland for their participation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan Prass

Megan Prass was an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland at the time of the study. She is now a Counseling Psychology Masters Candidate  at Towson University, Towson, MD, USA. Her research interests include psychotherapy process and outcome, working with dreams, and therapist training and supervision.

Arcadia Ewell

Arcadia Ewell was an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland at the time of the study. She is currently a Faculty Research Assistant at the University of Maryland and will be pursuing her Ph.D starting next year. Her research interests include the effects of early adversity on the development of cognitive abilities with a specific interest in biological development. She is also interested in researching and implementing interventions.

Clara E. Hill

Clara E. Hill is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. Her research interests include psychotherapy process and outcome, therapist training and supervision, meaning in life, dream work, and qualitative research.

Dennis M. Kivlighan

Dennis M. Kivlighan, Jr is a professor in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education and Special Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. His research interests include individual and group psychotherapy process and outcome,Interpersonal theory, and Quantitative methods.