Volume 18, Issue 3
The Voice as a Psychotherapeutic Instrument: The therapists' view
Abstract
The importance that psychotherapists assign to the non-verbal aspects of their own voice and those of their patients was studied. A questionnaire was applied to 25 therapists of different theoretical orientations and expertise levels. Qualitativedescriptive procedures were used to analyze their answers, which made it possible to conceptualize and categorize different voice parameters of relevance for the psychotherapy. ""The patients' voice characteristic"" and ""The use of the voice as a tool"", emerged as the main categories. Their concepts and attributes are illustrated with excerpts taken from two in-deep interviews conducted with seniors' psychotherapists. The implications and scopes of these results are discussed, and future lines of study related with the voice as a therapeutic instrument are presented.
Keywords
voice in psychotherapy, psychotherapist, qualitative research, process research