An interpretative phenomenological analysis of doctoral student psychotherapists' experiences of therapeutic alliance rupture with their schema therapy patients whom they took supervision for and limited reparenting imagery for their rupture experiences

Thoroughly examination of student psychotherapists' therapeutic alliance rupture experiences and application of Limited Reparenting Imagery, a Schema Therapy intervention, for their rupture experiences were aimed at this thesis. Two separate studies, which used inductive qualitative analysis methods, were conducted. In the first study, five psychotherapist members of the purposive sample were idiographically interviewed with semi-structured interviews. The transcripts were analyzed with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). According to the results, five super-ordinate themes emerged. These are "The Patient Who Leaves Alone but Never Abandons", "Pandora's Box Has Opened: Things That Overshadow Spontaneity (This super-ordinate theme has four sub-ordinate themes: "Being Novice: The Constituent of Inefficacy", "The Myth of Ideal Therapist", "The Ones Contaminate from The Past", "The Need for 'Being Seen' in Supervision"), "Things Seen in a Momentary Control Loss: Therapists' Splits That They Could Never Sew", "Through The Recovery Tide: I Am Not Alone, I Can Do This!", "Against All The Odds, Glad To Have It!". In the second study, a Limited Reparenting Imagery was applied to the same sample, for their rupture experiences within semi-structured interviews. After the imagery, their experiences were examined through questions like "how they lived the imagery experience" and "how they made sense of the rupture after the imagery". According to the thematic analysis of the transcripts, three super-ordinate themes emerged. These are "The Myth of Being Ideal Doesn't Allow the Flow", "What are The Recuperative Things? (This super-ordinate theme has three sub-ordinate themes: "I Listen to My Body with My Eyes Closed", "Wounded but Not a Surrender", "and The Sanitarians Make Entrance…"), "Quite Different Person (This super-ordinate theme has two sub-ordinate themes: "Relief: Emotions Calmed, Needs Met", "The Story Changes: Therapist, Not a Student Anymore; Adult, Not a Child Anymore"). The themes were discussed in the context of related literature.