| Summary: | Psychotherapy is an interpersonal encounter where a therapist collaborates with
clients to facilitate a healing process. Due to the personal nature of the therapeutic encounter,
the therapist requires the necessary skills and knowledge, as well as a differentiated sense of
self. The importance of supporting the psychotherapy trainee’s own differentiation process
seemed to have been neglected in research in recent years. In South Africa there has recently
been increasing pressure to select larger groups of trainees which has the risk that the tending
to differentiation would further be neglected. The purpose of this research study is to reemphasise
the importance of differentiation of self of the psychotherapy trainee by examining
my own process of differentiation during my psychotherapy training. This study introduces
the reader to these concepts and explores psychotherapy training in general and the Unisa
training method specifically. The research design of this study is autoethnography which falls
in the realm of social constructionism and the coding method is Thematic Data Analysis. The
research findings as reflected in the two global themes namely individuation; and gaining
and strengthening authentic relationships, seem to accurately reflect the process of
differentiation. The specific training method of the Unisa training team in combination with
the way in which I engaged with this process seemed important for the facilitation of this
process of differentiation. === Psychology === M.A. (Clinical Psychology)
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