Clients' Assimilation of the Voice of Their Therapist

by Mosher, James K.

This study is a theory building investigation of clients’ assimilation of their therapist. The assimilation model posits that individuals accumulate and organize threads of experience into constellations around central people, events, or experiences. These constellations may be expressed as voices. In particular, the therapist may form a center around which the client’s in-session experiences are associated and organized into a voice—called the voice of the therapist. Five interviews with former psychotherapy clients about their experiences with their therapists were analyzed using a modified form of the qualitative method of assimilation analysis. Based on case observations, a tentative theory of how clients assimilate the voice of their therapist was articulated as the Assimilation of the Therapist Sequence.