Abstract
Lietaer (1993) conceptually breaks down therapist’s genuineness into two aspects. One is “congruence”, which is an internal awareness and acceptance of experiences. The other is “transparency”, which concerns external communication of them. This study investigated these two aspects by focusing on two cases in which genuineness became specially apparent, and conducting interviews based on the Interpersonal Process Recall on two experienced and integrative therapists. A qualitative analysis using Grounded Theory Approach generated four categories: (1) “Getting closer to the client’s experiences” in which therapists sought to get in touch with their deep client’s experiences, (2) “Digesting the client’s experiences” in which therapists sought to resonate with client’s experience and understand the meaning of it, (3) “Parting from client’s experience” in which therapists paid attention to their own feeling and judgment and withdrew from contact with client’s experiences, (4) “Conveying therapist’s own experiences” in which the therapists shared their own experiences with their clients both verbally and nonverbally. Genuineness as found in this study was closely related to the therapists’ empathy. Furthermore, there were some common processes that the examined two cases had in common.
