Supervisors' perceptions of the relationship between therapist self-disclosure and clinical effectiveness

The findings suggest that the clinical supervisors surveyed associate therapist effectiveness (i.e., competence and sophistication) with capacity for self-revelation in the presence of clients. Trainee maturity as therapist was not correlated highly with self-disclosure, a finding that may indicate that self-disclosure is (a) more independent of the training process than competence and sophistication, and (b) that self-disclosure, as manifested in the clinical context, may be more of a trait than a state-like personality characteristic.