Why Therapists should Take a Good Look at Themselves: and How?

Personal practice has been a core part of therapist skill development in many traditions of psychotherapy since the time of Freud. Mostly, personal practice has meant personal therapy or in some cases experiential groups. However, neither personal therapy nor experiential groups have been a core part of the training of CBT therapists. So is there a place for personal practice in CBT training - or not? If yes, what form should it take? Based on 20 years empirical research on the self-practice/self-reflection (SP/SR) approach to training and a recent analysis of the impact of other personal practices such as personal therapy and meditation programs, Prof. Bennett-Levy has developed a Personal Practice model (Bennett-Levy, 2019; Bennett-Levy & Finlay-Jones, 2018). He suggests that the time has come for CBT therapists to take a good look at themselves, and argues that personal practice may have a specific and unique impact on therapist skilfulness. Furthermore, his analysis suggests that the skills developed through personal practice are central to achieving better client outcomes. The questions that then arise are: What type(s) of personal practice? For whom? At what stage in training or professional development? Although we are at an early stage in answering these questions, the Personal Practice model provides some testable hypotheses that will be illustrated through several examples of recent personal practice studies.