Sources of influence on the professional development of psychologists and psychiatrists in Norway and Germany

Background: There are many professional psychotherapists, but no psychotherapy profession. The psychotherapists’ professions vary between countries, the most frequent being psychiatry and clinical psychology.

Aim: As these professions have different basic training and also may be impacted differently by other factors, we wanted to study potential differences as to perceived influences on their development as psychotherapists across career level, theoretical orientation, and gender.

Methods: More than 2500 Norwegian and German psychiatrists and psychologists reported data on their professional development in the DPCCQ/2000, a lengthy multi-part survey instrument developed within the ‘Collaborative Research Network’ of the Society for Psychotherapy Research. The four groups were compared for differences, and a series of multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the impact of profession on a variety of aspects of therapist experiences.

Results: Although a few therapist experiences (e.g. teaching, treating patients, institutional conditions) had a significantly different impact between the two professions, as a main effect, they only accounted for less than 1% or the variance.

Conclusion: Profession seems to have little influence on perceived development as a psychotherapist, and it is reasonable to conclude that other therapist qualities, often personal qualities, are more important for therapeutic processes and outcomes.