Psychotherapists’ assumptions towards their clients: A phenomenological study

People encounter many factors that affect them in their lives, and they build their notions around these experiences. In this way, they have judgments and assumptions about the world. Similarly, psychotherapists can make many assumptions about their clients in their sessions. In this study assumptions of some psychotherapists as well as their perceptions, experiences, and perspectives were examined. For this purpose, 11 interview questions were prepared, and eight psychotherapists (5 females and 3 males) aged 30-39 working in various provinces in Turkey were interviewed. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed through MAXQDA 20 software. While analyzing the data, Giorgi's descriptive phenomenology analysis steps were followed. The experiences of the psychotherapists about their assumptions in the session processes were analyzed under the categories of “assumptions about clients”, “assumption-formation process”, and “coping with assumptions”. Perspectives of the psychotherapists towards assumptions were analyzed under the categories of “the impact of assumptions on the process”, “inferences”, and “recommendations.” The findings obtained were discussed and compared with the literature.