J Contemp Psychother (2010) 40:125–130
DOI 10.1007/s10879-010-9137-1
ORIGINAL PAPER
The Three Legs of the Practitioner’s Learning Stool:
Practice, Research/Theory, and Personal Life
Thomas M. Skovholt • Michael T. Starkey
Published online: 11 March 2010
 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract The goal of this article is to introduce the many
guides that serve as our knowledge base in the helping
professions. Practitioners work with the complexity of
human emotion, thought, and variability, which at times
makes the work confusing. In order to deal with the con-
fusion, the practitioner attends many years of school and
intensive practical experiences to be optimally prepared to
work with human beings. Even so, different philosophies
exist as to what the best sources of practitioner knowledge
are. Where should practitioners get their ideas? The aca-
demic culture suggests it should be science; the practitioner
culture suggests reflection on practice; candid discussion
with practitioners suggests that the therapist’s personal life
is the richest source of knowledge. This article argues that
practitioner expertise is like a three-legged stool with each
of the foregoing areas essential to optimal functioning.
Keywords Expertise
Evidence-based practice

Therapy
Effective practice
The Intense Search for Answers
Practitioners are driven by an intense search for answers to
ease client pain. The job is to navigate the often inexpli-
cable interpersonal space between client and therapist in a
way that provides maximal benefit for the client. The goal
is to find definitive answers that really work, like the pro-
verbial hot knife cutting through butter. Years of practice,
intense perusal of professional literature and theory, hours
of consultation all provide the practitioner with a solid base
T. M. Skovholt (&)
M. T. Starkey
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
e-mail: skovh001@umn.edu
upon which to practice. Arguably graduate school, practi-
cum, internship, and post internship continuing education
are all ways in which the therapist searches for the elusive
Holy Grail for treating clients. Therapists quickly learn,
however, that the mystery of life and living well, while
there are many definitions for these, are not unidimensional
and easy to quantify.
In time, this search for certainty shares the stage with a
reluctant accepting of uncertainty. Over time, practitioners
begin to realize that the circle of not knowing grows as fast
the circle of knowing and that ambiguity is part of the tattoo
of the counseling and therapy professions. In any given
therapeutic hour, so much is said, not said, nonverbally
communicated. Therapists have the daunting task of
encoding information, making sense out of it, and giving it
back to the client in a way that hopefully helps. With so much
happening in the session, this task is often quite challenging.
Reed (2006) lists 33 variables as active in the counseling/
therapy session. When 33 variables are interacting, there are
1,089 possibilities in each therapy/counseling session. The
work is confusing, the ambiguity at times frightening.
This paradoxical quest, the intense search for answers
while accepting the swampy reality of human complexity,
is a life long journey. How wonderful it would be to think
that therapy is the application of the treatment to the cli-
ent—a kind of spray-painting the other. Then, all practi-
tioners would need to do is learn a method, a school, a
technique, an empirically supported treatment, a manual-
ized approach and apply it. Unfortunately, the client is not
like a rock that can be spray painted but rather a living,
thinking human being who is very much a part of the two-
person dance of therapy. But it is very hard to accept
uncertainty. Human beings are generally unable to tolerate
the mysterious and unexplained. Giving names and labels
to chaotic forces provides one with a sense of control
123
126
(Yalom 1995). Even so, the chaotic can be exciting: with it
comes a sense of newness and something to be discovered.
The hallmark feature of counseling and psychotherapy is
ambiguity. The work lacks a certain precision craved by
practitioners and persistently sought by researchers. Man-
agement of the ambiguity, the uncertainty, and negotiation
of the convoluted material client’s present occurs through
two distinct tasks. The first task is the career long process
of looking for certainty while reluctantly accepting the
world of uncertainty. The second task, a more formidable
one indeed, is the acquisition of wisdom.
The Development of Personal Wisdom
A group of Master Therapists showed (Jennings and
Skovholt 1999; Skovholt et al. 2004) that it is the thera-
pist’s personal qualities that really carry the freight. These
elite therapists embodied a mixture of several characteris-
tics and in order to be considered a Master Therapist,
expertise in the cognitive domain, the emotional domain,
and the relational domain was essential. These therapists’
cognitive characteristics (e.g., a voracious appetite for
learning), emotional characteristics (e.g., a fine tuned self-
awareness), and relational characteristics (e.g., a proficient
ability to intensively engage clients) all helped maintain
their equilibrium in times of uncertainty. It was concluded
that excelling as a practitioner mainly involves developing,
at a very high level, as a person. This development involves
a deep acceptance and understanding of the self; being
genuinely humble; a high level of self awareness; and an
intense will to grow and learn (Skovholt et al. 2004). This
parallels Wampold’s (2007) research, where he indicated
that treatment is most successful because of the therapist,
not the treatment. In fact, there is little evidence to support
one treatment approach over another (Wampold 2007).
Therefore, therapist personal development is essential: just
as carpenters have their hammers, screwdrivers, and other
tools, therapists need to rely—almost exclusively—on one
tool: the self (Yalom 2003).
Learning a technique takes a few hours. Becoming a wise
person takes years. Bales and Staudinger (2000) define
wisdom this way: ‘‘wisdom [is] an expertise in the conduct
and meaning of life… knowledge and judgment about the
essence of the human condition and the ways and means of
planning, managing, and understanding a good life’’ (p.
124). This second task—becoming more a mature and wiser
human being—is elusive, slippery, and not easily captured.
The task of becoming wiser and more mature is life long.
These two tasks—striving towards personal maturity
and wisdom, and searching for certainty while accepting
uncertainty—fit well with these descriptions of Master
Therapists:
123
J Contemp Psychother (2010) 40:125–130
Somebody that’s accepting. Somebody that’s smart.
Somebody that’s interesting, curious, stays informed.
Somebody who takes care of themselves, so that they
have some energy to give. Somebody who has that
blend of being compassionate and empathetic, but
also challenging. Somebody who’s avail-
able…Somebody that’s wise…Kindness, humility is
a good word…Willing to listen and grow, I’m
thinking, an ability to see uniqueness.
They are people who are not afraid to take risks. They
are people who have a deeper understanding, a more
universal understanding. They are people who have a
lot of integrity. They are people who are comfortable
with their power, and comfortable using it… I think
they’re people who stretch themselves and stretch
other people to go beyond what they think is possi-
ble…give a sense of hope…It’s a combination of
challenge and giving that other piece that helps the
other person feel not alone and to feel it is possible to
do or achieve. (Skovholt et al. 2004, p. 126)
The development of expertise and the drive towards
mastery begins with these two premises: that our field is
uncertain and that greater wisdom as a person allows the
mature therapist to understand and embrace this uncer-
tainty and do good work. The acceptance of uncertainty
and development of personal wisdom are indeed formida-
ble tasks. Outlined below are guides that help the practi-
tioner navigate the search, traverse the terrain, and develop
the wisdom to help someone in distress.
The Three-Legged Epistemological Stool
There are several competing sources of knowledge for
practitioner development on the way to mastery, and
practitioners get their best ideas for the highly complex and
difficult counseling and therapy enterprise from several
sources. Three epistemological sources—practitioner
experience, personal life, and academic research—are vital
to the practitioner. But, in therapy’s current political cli-
mate, there is contention about the applicability of these
three sources.
The practitioner culture suggests that reflection on the
craft is the most important source of influence. The aca-
demic research culture suggests that science is the best
source of knowledge for practice. Candid discussion with
practitioners, and a perusal of their writings, shows that
personal life is also a rich source of guidance and knowl-
edge. Great tension exists in the profession about the use of
these three knowledge bases. Each on its own provides rich
data, but each, when used exclusively, is not necessarily
sufficient to understand the complex nature of a client’s life.
J Contemp Psychother (2010) 40:125–130
All three strong legs (professional experience, academic
research, and personal life) of the practitioner stool provide
a sense of strength and balance. Wampold (2007) says that
psychotherapy walks a tightrope between the accepted
world of science and medicine and the less accepted world
of the religious, spiritual, and cultural. The tightrope pro-
posed here is one that legitimizes all three legs of the stool.
For example, a recent study of the 10 most influential
therapists over the last 25 years—Rogers, Beck, Minuchin,
Yalom, Satir, Ellis, Bowen, Jung, Erickson, and Gottman
(Psychotherapy Networker 2007)—reveals the importance of
each of these legs for practitioner development. The biogra-
phies, combined as one, describe these therapists as weaving,
so naturally, the science, the practice, and the personal in a
way that maximizes the effectiveness of their work.
The Leg of Practice
In the largest international study of practitioners, interac-
tion with clients was rated the number one source of pro-
fessional development (Orlinsky and Ronnestad 2005).
These practitioners said that their own hundreds and hun-
dreds practice hours were the central fountain of their own
developing expertise and wisdom. Sitting with clients who
try to make sense of their innermost experiences, to try and
relate to and integrate their pain is an extraordinary privi-
lege and it is nearly impossible to be unaffected by lis-
tening to their tales. To try and quantify some of these
experiences is a daunting task and likely an impossible one,
so it is no wonder that experienced therapists rate
their clients as their number one source of knowledge
(Ronnestad and Skovholt 2003). Being with clients and
trying to help them heal their most vulnerable wounds
offers a real life laboratory into how clients’ problems
develop. As much as the research method would like to
capture the ‘‘main’’ way in which pathology develops,
working with clients clues practitioners into the staggering
variability of the human condition, and working with this
ambiguity can be a tall order indeed. Practitioners in the
helping, teaching, and healing fields use the interaction with
the other as an intense learning laboratory; in fact, the
expertise literature shows that experience in the practiced
domain is considered essential for expertise (Chi et al. 1988).
Most psychology professors learn more by the act of
teaching, rather than the scholarship on teaching, to guide
their own teaching style and method (Thomas Brothen,
teaching award winner in psychology, personal communi-
cation, September 3, 2007). This is a testimony to the
power of professional experience as a guide to competence.
For example, learning to judge client readiness comes out
of interaction with many, many clients.
Many therapists dedicate their books to their clients.
Why? Perhaps the answer lies in that the most learning they
127
have encountered has been from those with whom they
have worked intimately, who taught them so much about
the human condition and what it means to be alive. The
classroom can only teach so much. Counseling and psy-
chotherapy is intense work with human beings who are
incredibly variable. Practitioners do not work with inert
objects that can more easily be understood in the labora-
tory. Practitioners need to understand how humans are put
together, what tears a person down, and how to heal that.
That partially comes from a book but the bulk of it comes
from being with it and learning from that presence.
In graduate school, students are so often exposed to how
working with clients ‘‘should’’ be. For example, empiri-
cally supported treatments, evidence based practice, and
movements like these state that practice should be guided
by research. A positive and well-intentioned idea. How-
ever, when working with clients, practitioners learn about
the limitations of the scientific method. The practice world
is dominated by single cases, not large numbers of people
chosen very narrowly for a study. The stories that they
bring are wrought with pain, hardship, joy, wonder, and
awe that therapists can be overwhelmed with the material
clients present. This is where the large map—the research
method—is handy but not completely useful. But reflection
on practice by itself while ignoring research and the ther-
apist’s personal life is counterproductive as well. Here,
human judgment error makes this data less than ideal,
which is why the other two legs become so imperative.
Lebow (2006) reported that his colleagues who were
both a part of the research and practice cultures stated that
they used research findings sparsely in their practice. This
does not mean that research should be abandoned alto-
gether and practitioners should be able to do as they please.
However, this finding indicates that either practitioners
need to be more accepting of research findings or
researchers need to start performing research that is more
relevant to the practice of psychotherapy.
Practice is essential. Different training opportunities,
quality supervision, and exposing oneself to the range of
human emotion are essential in order to receive the max-
imum benefit from this leg. Furthermore, rather than
fighting therapeutic ambiguity, learn to embrace the cog-
nitive complexity of the process. Master therapists value
the uncertainty and intricacies of being alive and actually
seek out ambiguity (Jennings and Skovholt 1999). Finally,
it is not enough to simply sit with clients who are trying to
make sense of the world, diagnose them, and treat them.
Psychotherapists are often thought of as healers, easers of
psychic distress, which to a great extent is true. This is an
attractive label. It gives the therapist power: therapists are
the healers, the people who provide relief. The shadow of
this, however, is hubris, and with hubris comes an
unwillingness to learn. Therefore, in order to fully learn
123
128
from practice, therapists must view themselves not only as
the people who can offer help, but they must also recognize
and accept that clients have much to teach, sometimes
much more than therapists have to teach them.
Academic Research as a Leg for Practice
There is less need to discuss this leg because in the
empirical research world that dominates university life, this
is the high prestige knowledge source. Inexperienced
graduate students are asked by their programs to abandon
earlier ways of helping to adopt a more objective way of
working with clients (Ronnestad and Skovholt 2001). It is
assumed at this point in the educational process that the
many who have gone before and contributed original
research or scholarly work should be emulated. This is a
valuable way of learning how to do something. Learn what
others have done, do the same, and hopefully you will have
the same results.
The traditional scientist practitioner model teaches its
students to be connoisseurs of research, to learn what
works with whom and why. Students are taught to be
skeptical of the research findings so that research can be
done to find more effective ways of helping people. Some
programs have even adopted manualized treatment
approaches in which the practitioner is asked to formulate a
diagnosis, choose a manualized treatment for that diagno-
sis, and follow therapeutic guidelines outlined in that
manual in order to be of greatest help to the client
(Chambless and Hollon 1998). Faced with convoluted
clinical material, psychological researchers help give
names, and thus control, to ambiguous concepts.
Indeed, research on counseling and psychotherapy helps
the practitioner navigate the equivocal nature of what cli-
ents bring to the therapeutic interaction. Research has
taught many things in psychology and has helped answer
the difficult questions that have been posed by prominent
psychologists. For example, Eysenck (1952) challenged the
psychotherapeutic nation by declaring psychotherapy was
about as beneficial as receiving no treatment at all. In fact,
the research he had done found that people engaged in
psychoanalysis actually had worse cure rates than people
not treated. This spawned thousands of research studies
demonstrating the positive efficacy of counseling and
psychotherapy. A comprehensive summary of these studies
can be found in the esteemed Bergin and Garfield’s
Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (Lam-
bert 2004). Within it, the reader finds him or herself
immersed in a sea of good, objective data stating that
psychotherapy works, and it works quite well.
These early pioneers who carved out the roads current
practitioners travel so effortlessly are invaluable ancestors.
Studies completed by brilliant researchers finding a way to
123
J Contemp Psychother (2010) 40:125–130
operationalize very complex psychic phenomena have
stood the test of time and have provided both researchers
and practitioners valuable tools for future trends in this
field. One current trend, as stated above, is the push
towards empirically supported treatments (Chambless and
Hollon 1998). Here, therapies are designed to fit the cli-
ent’s diagnosis.
Many studies found in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook
of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (Lambert 2004)
examined disorder based psychotherapies. The wisdom
behind these approaches is clear: the practitioner, a skilled
diagnostician, chooses a treatment approach that has been
shown—in the research lab—to be effective in working
with a particular disorder. This is the spray painting
approach. Interestingly, though, the more research that is
completed, the more controversy about what works is
stirred up. For example, the work of Wampold (2001) says
that there are factors common to all treatment approaches
that seem to predict outcome better than the individual
treatments themselves. While it is quite certain that gradual
exposure to a feared stimulus will reduce anxiety in the
majority of clients (a behaviorist approach), the other more
complex phenomena of the therapeutic interaction are not
so easily partialled out in regards to individual therapeutic
approaches. In fact, Wampold (2001) found that there is
not a single legitimate therapeutic intervention that pro-
vides the most meaningful and lasting benefit to clients.
In a way, research gives a rough map of how to work
with clients. Human beings share many similarities and
things that work with one person are likely to translate into
working with another person. But, because clients live in a
world dominated by subjectivity, the generalizability of
research findings will be ambitious at best.
Unfortunately, from the practitioner side, there are
limitations with this leg. The academic terms of ‘impact
factor’, and ‘citation index’ sound like they relate directly
to practice. To an extent they do relate. The more an article
is read, the more likely the impact it will have on practice.
However, practitioners use research sparsely in their
practice (Lebow 2006). These are terms that academics use
to judge each other in the small circle world of research.
There is no ‘practitioner impact factor.’ This reduces the
usefulness of the work for practitioners. Indeed, Kazdin
(2004) observed that contemporary research on psycho-
therapy has limited applicability to the practice of psy-
chotherapy. Thus, the complete fiber for the stool becomes
a balance of the three.
Even though there are limitations to this leg, the
importance of science for practice cannot be ignored. Just
as it would be foolish to disregard the wisdom clients bring,
it is equally foolish to scoff at the scientific method. In fact,
interviews with master therapists indicate that a voracious
appetite for learning propelled their professional careers
J Contemp Psychother (2010) 40:125–130
(Jennings and Skovholt 1999). The search for knowledge is
exciting for them, and one way to accumulate knowledge is
through research.
Personal Life as a Leg
Living life as a human being is a powerful source of
knowledge. The education is ubiquitous and ongoing; there
is richness to the practitioner’s personal life. Practitioners
have had to make sense out of a world with no guidebook,
a potentially dangerous world filled with wonder, awe,
pain, and loss. Most of the best lessons in developmental
psychology concern the therapist’s own experience of
going through life. The intense series of attachments and
losses and more attachments—to people, ideas, places,
values—that comprise human life teach so much that can
be used to help clients in their struggles.
The personal world of loss and recovery is of great value
to practitioners because this is the expertise area needed by
their clients. Many counseling and therapy clients make the
pilgrimage to the practitioner’s office because of loss.
Scientific research and theory on many topics can be of
use, but the practitioner, to really understand, must know
and feel loss and suffering either directly or vicariously on
an emotional level [see, for example, The Year of Magical
Thinking (Didion 2006) for an important discussion of this
topic]. To know and understand suffering on a personal
level helps practitioners better understand client pain and
suffering thereby increasing the practitioner’s capacity for
empathy. Practitioners need to know the schema of grief;
what it is, how it is expressed, how to enter it and how to be
helpful in the healing process.
The personal life leg of the stool also relates to the
practitioner’s motives for the work. Sue (2005), for
example, remembers an incident of racial harassment when
he was a child that has stuck with him, taught him very
much, and largely informs his professional work. Indeed,
he thinks that integration of the practitioner’s personal and
professional lives is essential because then the work
becomes an expression of one’s total being.
The existential psychologists assert that being informed
by an existential lens lets therapists know that they are also
involved in existence, are also affected by their existential
situation, and that they are not immune to life’s harsh
realities. In order to be most effective with clients, thera-
pists need to realize and accept their own humanness. Not
only does this help practitioners connect with their clients,
it also provides clients with a sense of universality in which
they can understand that the therapist is human and is
affected by the exigencies of the human condition (Yalom
2003). Furr and Carroll (2003) in a study of graduate stu-
dents’ critical incidents that influenced their growth found
that many of the critical incidents reported in their
129
counseling training occurred outside of the academic life.
These incidents—not surprisingly—greatly influenced their
academic lives.
Personal life is a powerful knowledge source and an
important leg of the practitioner stool. Yet, the impact of
the practitioner’s own emotional life can distort as well as
illuminate; thus, the research and practice legs offset the
subtle distortions that may bubble up from this epistemo-
logical pool. To increase the personal knowledge base,
consider the following suggestions: Engage in personal
psychotherapy. An expansion of personal knowledge will
benefit along the path to mastery. Seasoned therapists rate
their own therapy as an important source of learning how to
perform psychotherapy (Ronnestad and Skovholt 2001).
Another point is to realize and understand that practitioners
are human and are not immune to the harsh realities of this
existence.
It can be easy to view the therapeutic relationship as
doctor/patient, analyst/analysand, or any other one up/one
down relationship. As stated above, this view can foster
hubris. What it also does is gives the therapist a false sense
of having life figured out and of having all the answers to
life’s unanswerable questions. The human story is not
reserved for clients: therapists are also fully involved in the
human narrative. Recognizing this not only helps the
therapist live a richer and more meaningful life, but it also
fosters empathy, makes it easier to relate to clients, and
helps with the creation of the ultimately important thera-
peutic relationship.
Conclusions
The Three Legs as a Whole
Beginning therapists reading about performing therapy and
the rewards of practice are often itching to get out and
practice and replicate what was read, observed, and even
fantasized about. When the reality of the therapy room
finally comes to fruition, there is often frustration, confu-
sion, and often a sense of anxiety about what to do.
Each leg of the stool offers insight and instruction to the
practitioner. One of the major prerequisites for optimal
functioning as a therapist is a sense of openness to learning
(Ronnestad and Skovholt 2001). Closing oneself off to
learning experiences is a source of professional stagnation.
Hence, the restrictive student and professional of psycho-
therapy who is not open to using the knowledge of each leg
of the stool ultimately robs him or herself of important
learning. The stool becomes unbalanced: the absence of a
leg makes the stool unstable and no longer can it provide
the foundation for the confusing and chaotic work in the
swampy world of the most complex of all species.
123
130
Carl Rogers, the most influential therapist of the past
25 years (Psychotherapy Networker 2007), used all three
legs of the stool in his work. Perhaps that was the key to his
success. Without his active work as a practitioner—espe-
cially in Rochester and at the University of Chicago—his
work would not have blossomed. Practitioner work, thus,
was essential. Without his active reflection in his own life,
his work would have had less depth [see On Becoming a
Person (Rogers 1961) and his reflection of turning age 85
(Rogers 1989)]. Without the use of research methods that
he first learned in agriculture, he would not have done the
extensive taping recording research that was essential to his
professional development.
Clients’ lives are venerable forests that need to be
navigated with great care. The navigational tools outlined
offer a navigational guide. The three legs of the practitioner
stool provide the clinician with a framework of how to
navigate the woods of each client’s life. While imperfect
standing alone, these three epistemological sources, when
taken together and reflected upon deeply, provide a much
needed guide. While one can never predict the happenings
of any given clinical situation, having the knowledge from
each of the epistemological legs serves as a welcomed
guide that prevents the practitioner from getting lost in the
wild.
References
Bales, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic
(pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence.
American Psychologist, 55, 122–136.
Chambless, D. L., & Hollon, S. D. (1998). Defining empirically
supported therapies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psy-
chology, 66, 7–18.
Chi, M. T. H., Glass, R., & Farr, M. J. (Eds.). (1988). The nature of
expertise. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Didion, J. (2006). The year of magical thinking. New York: Vintage.
Eysenck, H. J. (1952). The effects of psychotherapy: An evaluation.
Journal of Consulting Psychology, 16, 319–324.
Furr, S. R., & Carroll, J. J. (2003). Critical incidents in student
counselor development. Journal of Counseling and Develop-
ment, 81, 483–489.
123
All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately.
J Contemp Psychother (2010) 40:125–130
Jennings, L., & Skovholt, T. M. (1999). The cognitive, emotional, and
relational characteristics of master therapists. Journal of Coun-
seling Psychology, 46, 3–11.
Kazdin, A. E. (2004). Psychotherapy for children and adolescents. In
M. J. Lambert (Ed.), Bergin and Garfield’s handbook of
psychotherapy and behavior change (5th ed., pp. 543–589).
New York: Wiley.
Lambert, M. J. (Ed.). (2004). Bergin and Garfield’s handbook of
psychotherapy and behavior change (5th ed.). New York: Wiley.
Lebow, J. (2006). Research for the psychotherapist: From science to
practice. New York: Routledge
Orlinsky, D. E., & Ronnestad, M. H. (2005). How psychotherapists
develop: A study of therapeutic work and professional growth.
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Psychotherapy Networker. (2007). The top ten: The most influential
therapists of the past quarter-century. Psychotherapy Networker,
31(2), 24–36, 68.
Reed, G. M. (2006). What qualifies as evidence of effective practice?
In J. C. Norcross, L. E. Beutler, & R. F. Levant (Eds.), Evidence-
based practices in mental health (pp. 13–23). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Rogers, C. (1989). On reaching 85. In H. Kirschenbaum & V. L.
Henderson (Eds.), The Carl Rogers reader. Boston, MA:
Houghton & Mifflin.
Ronnestad, M. H., & Skovholt, T. M. (2001). Learning arenas for
professional development: Retrospective accounts of senior
psychotherapists. Professional Psychology, 32, 91–98.
Ronnestad, M. H., & Skovholt, T. M. (2003). The journey of the
counselor and therapist: Research findings and perspectives on
development. Journal of Career Development, 30, 5–44.
Skovholt, T. M., Jennings, L., & Mullenbach, M. (2004). Portrait of
the master therapist: The highly-functioning self. In T. M.
Skovholt & L. Jennings (Eds.), Master therapists: Exploring
expertise in therapy and counseling (pp. 125–146). Boston, MA:
Allyn & Bacon.
Sue, D. W. (2005). The continuing journey to multicultural compe-
tence. In R. K. Coyle & F. Bemak (Eds.), Journeys to
professional excellence: Lessons from leading counselor educa-
tors and practitioners (pp. 73–84). Alexandria, VA: American
Counseling Association.
Wampold, B. (2001). The great psychotherapy debate. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wampold, B. (2007). Psychotherapy: The humanistic (and effective)
treatment. American Psychologist, 62, 857–873.
Yalom, I. D. (1995). The theory and practice of group psychotherapy
(4th ed.). New York: Basic Books.
Yalom, I. D. (2003). The gift of therapy. New York: Harper Collins.