Dual therapy: personality change in the therapist while working with patients

This paper promotes a recognition that it is often necessary for therapists to engage in an extended therapeutic process of working on their own personality difficulties which arise in the course of treating various patients in order to help them more effectively. Although gradually it has become increasingly accepted that countertransferences frequently occur in the work of all therapists, such impediments to the therapeutic process almost inevitably have been considered to be overcome as soon as the therapist becomes aware of them. The focus of this paper is not on countertransference per se, about which much has already been written. Rather, it emphasizes the necessity for two parallel therapeutic processes which I have termed "dual therapy" in order to facilitate the benefits of psychotherapy.