Harry J. Aponte

The Family-School Interview: An Eco-Structural Approach

This paper describes the family-school interview, and intervention with a child, family, and school, taking into account the dynamics of each system in that ecological context and the structural interrelationships of these systems relative to the problem presented by the child.

Training the Person of the Therapist in an Academic Setting

Drexel Universitys Couple and Family Therapy Department recently introduced a formal course on training the person of a therapist. The course is based on Apontes Person-of-the-Therapist Training Model that up until now has only been applied in private, nonacademic institutes with postgraduate therapists. The model attempts to put into practice a philosophy that views the full person of therapists, and their personal vulnerabilities in particular, as the central tool through which therapists do their work in the context of the client-therapist relationship. This article offers a description of how this model has been tested with a group of volunteer students, and subsequently what had to be considered to formally structure the training into the Drexel curriculum.

An Instrument for Person-of-the-Therapist Supervision

This article introduces a tool that serves as a guide for building an effective bridge between the personal and technical aspects of therapy in supervision. The instrument is based on a model of clinical supervision that emphasizes the purposeful utilization of self-in the moment, with both flaws and strengths-in the therapeutic relationship in combination with the technical interventions with clients. The article also offers some aid to promote a personal integration of the philosophy underlying this supervisory model into a therapists clinical thinking and practice.

Beyond duality: the relationship between the personal and the professional selves of the therapist in the Person-of-the-Therapist Training (POTT)

ABSTRACT The Person-of-the-Therapist Training (POTT) model has been developing and evolving since the late seventies. The current study explored the relationship between the personal self-of-the-therapist and the professional self-of-the-therapist within the POTT. A directed content analysis of the 18 trainees’ final reflection papers at the end of a 9-month POTT was conducted. Findings suggest that even though the training’s goal is improving trainees’ ability to use their selves in therapy, changes in the therapist’s self appear to expand to other areas in the therapist’s life. Thus, the road to becoming a more effective therapist goes through personal changes, specifically self-awareness and the acceptance of one’s own struggles and imperfections. Implications for training and future research are discussed.

Introduction for Special Section on Training and Supervision

The succeeding three articles elaborate on the application of the Person-of-the-TherapistTraining (POTT) model for training and supervision in the use of self in therapy. The uniqueness of this model rests on the premise that while all would-be therapists need to continually work on knowing themselves and resolving their personal issues, the primary goal in training on the use of self needs to be the conscious, purposeful, and skillful management of self, as is, in the moment of engagement with the client. The first two of the three articles treat the POTT model as applied to the formation of master’s-level students in an academic setting, Drexel University’s Couple and Family Therapy Department. One article presents the training from the faculty’s perspective, the other from the viewpoint of two students. The third article, written outside the academic arena, applies the model to the supervisory process. These articles represent the first attempts to put into writing the application of the POTT model in an academic context and in the conduct of supervision.

“I matter, too”

ABSTRACT This narrative is about a journey of two people in a therapy relationship who come from distinctly different social locations – on the surface, unlike one another from a social context, yet not so unlike at a deeper personal level. One person, the client, is African American, 30 years of age, poor, unmarried mother of two children. The other person, the family therapist, is a 49-year-old Caucasian male, middles class, married, of Italian/Ukrainian ancestry. At first glance, we see little in common between these two individuals who are supposed to work together in the intimate context of a therapeutic relationship. How the therapist, with his supervisor, meets these challenges from the perspective of the Person of the Therapist (POTT) framework (Aponte et al., 2009; Aponte & Kissil, 2016) about a therapist’s use of self is the subject of this article. The premise of the article is that the therapist will need to reach within himself to be able to empathically connect with her in the deep common humanity of their personal lives, while making a singular effort to expand this empathic connection to include her social location and community context

Person of the Therapist supervision: Reflections of a therapist and supervisor on empathic-identification and differentiation

ABSTRACT In this paper, we will present a case vignette intimately detailing the work of a supervisor and therapist within the framework of the Person of the Therapist Training Model (POTT). The conceptual lenses we emphasize will be the empathic-identification and differentiation aspects of the relationship between therapist and client. In that context, the POTT calls for monitoring and describing the interplay between the personal and professional of the therapist in relation to both her supervisor and her client.