Meaning in life in psychotherapy: The perspective of experienced psychotherapists.
OBJECTIVE
Our goal was to explore the meaning experienced psychotherapists derive from providing psychotherapy, their beliefs about the role of meaning in life (MIL) in psychotherapy, how they worked with MIL with a client who explicitly presented concerns about MIL, and how they worked with a different client for whom MIL was a secondary and more implicit concern.


METHOD
Thirteen experienced psychotherapists were interviewed and data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research.


RESULTS
Therapists derived self-oriented meaning (e.g., feeling gratified, fulfilled, connected) and other-oriented meaning (helping others, making the world a better place) from providing psychotherapy. They believed that MIL is fundamental and underlies all human concerns, including those brought to therapy. In contrast to the clients who had implicit MIL concerns, clients who explicitly presented MIL concerns were reported to have more interpersonal problems and physical problems, but about the same amount of psychological distress and loss/grief. Therapists used insight-oriented interventions, support, action-oriented interventions, and exploratory interventions to work with MIL with both types of clients, but used more exploratory interventions with implicit than explicit MIL clients.


CONCLUSIONS
MIL is a salient topic for experienced, existentially oriented psychotherapists; they work with MIL extensively with some clients in psychotherapy. We recommend that therapists receive training to work with MIL in therapy, and that they pay attention to MIL concerns when they conduct psychotherapy. We also recommend additional research on MIL in psychotherapy.
['Hill|Clara E|CE|', 'Kanazawa|Yoshi|Y|', 'Knox|Sarah|S|', 'Schauerman|Iris|I|', 'Loureiro|Darren|D|', 'James|Danielle|D|', 'Carter|Imani|I|', 'King|Shakeena|S|', 'Razzak|Suad|S|', 'Scarff|Melanie|M|', 'Moore|Jasmine|J|']
D000328:Adult D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel D005260:Female D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D011613:Psychotherapy
meaning in life existential psychotherapy meaning therapists derive from doing psychotherapy psychotherapy process