Our Best Selves: Defining and Actualizing Expertise in Psychotherapy

Psychotherapist expertise proves an urgent topic for practice and training, but insufficient research and conflicting definitions confound efforts to enhance expertise. In an ambitious article, Hill, Spiegel, Hoffman, Kivlighan, and Gelso offer a clear definition of expertise and propose broad indicators. In this reaction, we (a) laud the prominent psychologists for undertaking the Herculean task, (b) highlight points of convergence on relationships and responsiveness between their conclusions and those of others and ourselves, (c) take some collegial exceptions to their proposals and advance alternatives, and (d) underscore the probability that expertise resides far more in the person of the therapist than in specific methods. In particular, distinguishing expertise from experience, and separating expertise about psychotherapy from expertise demonstrated in session, will help to operationalize and cultivate it. The title of this commentary—“Our Best Selves”—embodies the conviction that developing the person of the therapist will most likely actualize expertise.