Pathways to professional training: a multinational study of psychotherapy trainees

When aspiring psychotherapists start their training they enter it with particular educational and occupational backgrounds as well as childhood family experiences. Facets of these can be regarded as patterns of pathways to psychotherapy training potentially relevant for professional development. Based on a large-scale international trainee data base and comprising a wide range of variables we analysed whether different pathway patterns could be differentiated.

Pathway patterns were identified through cluster analysis using information from the Trainee Background Information Form of approximately 1300 trainees' data collected in 14 countries by the SPRISTAD Collaborative Research Network.

Four pathway patterns could be differentiated defined by trainees' educational and occupational backgrounds: Novice Psych Students; Advanced Psych Trainees; Ancillary Clinical Professionals; and Unconventional Novice Candidates. Cluster analysis also led to differentiating three pathway patterns to psychotherapy training defined by trainees' childhood family experiences: Nurturing Families; Challenging Families; and Adversity-marked Families. Educational-occupational and childhood family pathways were generally unrelated, but each was associated with differential theoretical emphases of the training programs that trainees had selected. A comparison of pathway patterns across trainees in the five nations with most respondents showed many significant differences, especially with regard to educational-occupational pathways.

Empirically, psychotherapy trainees entering training are not a homogeneous group but differ substantially concerning their educational/professional and family background pathway patterns to psychotherapy. The impact of these differences on training and professional development should be further explored.