Emotional experiencing: to facilitate or regulate?

In the preceding several decades, both empirical research and advances in the theoretical literatures of diverse schools of thought suggest that greater client in-session emotional experiencing is related to therapeutic change. What has yet to be explored and explicated are the variables that indicate when, and with whom, facilitating emotional experiencing may be most and least helpful. This article offers an exploration of the clinical and empirical literatures that bear on this issue. It also suggests preliminary client and therapist variables that point either toward or away from the therapeutic facilitation of client emotional experiencing.