Becoming a psychotherapist: The personal nature of clinical work, emotional availability and personal allegiances

Becoming a psychotherapist is a challenging and exciting process. There are many important facets of training in the development of a skilled therapis t. Emotional availability and personal allegiances are two interrelated are as of a therapist's development that might be underemphasized relative to o ther areas of training in many graduate clinical training programs. This ar ticle offers a conceptualization for emotional availability and personal al legiances, presents a view of the treatment process that places emotional a vailability at the center of therapeutic responsiveness, and argues that pe rsonal allegiances may limit a student-therapist's emotional availability w ith clients. This article addresses the concepts of emotional availability and personal allegiances primarily from a contemporary, psychodynamic theor etical perspective, but key ideas from the cognitive-behavioral viewpoint a re also used to illustrate their significance in a therapist's development, however. These concepts are suggested to have relevance for students, supe rvisors, and more seasoned therapists of varying theoretical orientations.