Solitude, silence, and the training of psychotherapists: A preliminary study

The spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude have long been practiced within the contemplative Christian tradition as a means of character transf ormation and experiencing God. Do these disciplines affect the use of silen ce in psychotherapy for Christian clinicians in a graduate training program ! Nineteen graduate students in clinical psychology were assigned to a wait -list control condition or a training program involving the disciplines of solitude and silence, and the groups were reversed after the first cohort c ompleted the spiritual disciplines training. One group, which was coinciden tally comprised of more introverted individuals, demonstrated a striking in crease in the number of silent periods and total duration of silence during simulated Psychotherapy sessions during the period of training. The other group, more extraverted in nature, did not show significant changes in ther apeutic silence during the training. These results cause us to pose researc h questions regarding the interaction of personality characteristics and sp iritual disciplines in training Christian psychotherapists.