Therapist’s emotional reactions toward patients in clinical facilities are a key concept in the treatment of personality disorders. Considering only clinical settings specialized in treatment of personality pathology the present paper aimed at: (1) assessing any direct relationship between patient symptom severity and therapist emotional response; (2) exploring patients’ functioning configurations that can be associated with specific therapist reactions (3) investigating whether these relationships remains significant when accounting for other setting variables related to patients or therapist. The present study included 43 outpatients with personality disorders who underwent a psychotherapy treatment in two Italian facilities dedicated to outpatients with personality disorders and their 19 psychotherapists. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90R) was used to explore clinical severity condition. Psychotherapists completed the Therapist Response Questionnaire (TRQ) to identify pattern of therapists’ response and the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200) in order to assess personality traits of the patients. No significant relationship between the clinical severity of the symptoms and the therapist’ responses was found. Even when controlled for clinical severity condition, duration of the treatment, age and educational level of the patient or years of therapist experience, most of SWAP-200 traits appeared to be significant predictors of therapist’ emotional responses. The present study confirms the value of therapists’ emotional response as a useful tool in understanding psychological processes related to clinical practice highlighting its context-dependent dimension.

中文翻译：

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在人格障碍治疗环境中心理治疗师对患者人格特质的情绪反应：一项探索性研究

治疗师在临床机构中对患者的情绪反应是治疗人格障碍的关键概念。本文仅考虑专门用于治疗人格病理的临床环境，目的是：（1）评估患者症状严重程度与治疗师情绪反应之间的直接关系；（2）探索可能与特定治疗师反应相关的患者功能配置（3）在考虑与患者或治疗师相关的其他设置变量时，研究这些关系是否仍然很重要。本研究包括43名患有人格障碍的门诊病人，他们在两家专门针对人格障碍的门诊病人及其19名心理治疗师的意大利机构中接受了心理治疗。症状清单-90修订版（SCL-90R）用于研究临床严重程度状况。心理治疗师完成了“治疗师反应调查表”（TRQ），以确定治疗师反应的方式，并通过Shedler-Westen评估程序200（SWAP-200）来评估患者的人格特质。在症状的临床严重程度与治疗师的反应之间未发现显着相关性。即使在控制临床严重程度，治疗时间，患者的年龄和教育水平或治疗师经验的年限的情况下，大多数SWAP-200特质似乎也是治疗师情绪反应的重要预测指标。