Monthly Spotlight - August

Relational Ethics: Rethinking Self-Disclosure Through a Pluralistic Frame

Forthcoming 2026 BACP Ethical Framework (my thoughts)

One of the most significant developments in the forthcoming 2026 BACP Ethical Framework is its explicit emphasis on relational ethics. This represents an important shift away from viewing ethics as simply the application of rules, principles or prohibitions, towards understanding ethical practice as something that emerges within the unique relationship between therapist and client. Ethical decisions are rarely made in isolation; they are shaped by context, trust, power, vulnerability and the lived experience of two people engaged in therapeutic work together. This has particular relevance to the debate surrounding therapist self-disclosure. Too often, the discussion has been reduced to simplistic assertions that self-disclosure is either inherently ethical or inherently unethical. Such binary thinking overlooks the complexity of clinical practice. A relational ethical perspective asks a different question altogether: not 'Should therapists self-disclose?' but rather 'Under what circumstances, with what intention, in whose interests, and with what potential impact on the therapeutic relationship?' It is this shift—from rule-based ethics to relational judgement—that provides the backdrop for understanding why thoughtful, clinically attuned self-disclosure can, in some circumstances, deepen the therapeutic process, whilst in others it may risk diverting it. The ethical task is therefore not simply to avoid self-disclosure, nor to embrace it uncritically, but to exercise careful professional judgement grounded in the needs of the client, the nature of the relationship, and ongoing reflective practice.

Rethinking Self-Disclosure

One misconception I increasingly encounter is the claim that a therapist who self-discloses must necessarily be a bad or inadequately trained therapist. With the growth of therapy websites, 'social media' and 'so-called specialists' offering definitive advice about psychotherapy, complex clinical questions are often reduced to simplistic rules. We are told that a good therapist never reveals anything personal, never shows emotion and always responds to a client’s question with another question. These pronouncements can sound authoritative, particularly to somebody who is unfamiliar with the diversity of therapeutic traditions, but certainty of tone should not be mistaken for clinical understanding.

Self-disclosure cannot be judged solely by whether it happened. The more important questions concern why it happened, whose needs it served, how it was experienced by the client and what it did within the therapeutic relationship. A disclosure may be thoughtful, containing and therapeutically significant, or intrusive, unprocessed and primarily serving the therapist. Equally, non-disclosure may protect the therapeutic space and allow unconscious material to emerge, but it may also become rigid, defensive or unnecessarily withholding. Neither disclosure nor non-disclosure is automatically evidence of good therapy.

As a pluralistic and integrative therapist working through a relational and psychodynamic lens, I do not follow an absolute rule that I must always disclose or never disclose. I am a relational, straightforward and realistic therapist. I do not attempt to present myself as an emotionless authority or an entirely blank screen. At times, I will disclose something when I believe it may support the client, strengthen the therapeutic relationship or deepen our understanding of what is happening between us. At other times, I will choose not to disclose because answering may close down material that needs to be thought about psychodynamically.

My decision depends upon the client, the material, the stage of the therapy and the total relational situation.

Freud and the Protective Function of Restraint

Freud’s classical position remains an important starting point. In his recommendations to analysts, he wrote that the therapist should be “opaque to his patients and, like a mirror”, showing them only what they had brought into the room (Freud, 1912). His concern was that extensive personal revelation could interfere with the development of the transference and encourage the client to become preoccupied with the therapist’s life rather than their own inner world.

Although I would not apply Freud’s mirror metaphor literally, I take the warning behind it seriously. A client’s question about me may appear to be a simple request for information, but it may also contain anxiety, fantasy, hope, suspicion or a test of the relationship. The client may be wondering whether I can understand them, whether I am safe, whether I will judge them, whether I have suffered, whether I have needs they must accommodate or whether knowing more about me will provide greater control over the relationship.

Answering immediately may provide factual certainty while removing the opportunity to understand the emotional meaning of the question. At such moments, non-disclosure is not avoidance or secrecy. It preserves a space in which the client’s expectations, fears and relational patterns can emerge.

This is one reason I will sometimes not self-disclose. It would not always be psychodynamic to satisfy the immediate request without first thinking about what the request represents.

Ferenczi and the Elasticity of Technique

Ferenczi challenged rigid and emotionally distant applications of psychoanalysis. His idea of the “elasticity” of technique emphasised tact, sensitivity and the analyst’s capacity to adapt to the particular patient rather than demanding that every patient adapt to one fixed method. He was especially attentive to the damage caused when professional authority reproduced earlier experiences of disbelief, coldness or emotional abandonment (Ferenczi, 1928).

Ferenczi’s work does not provide permission for indiscriminate disclosure. Rather, it reminds me that technique must remain alive to the person in front of me. A refusal to answer every question may protect the therapy with one client but reproduce emotional unavailability with another. Conversely, providing personal information to demonstrate warmth may feel intrusive or destabilising to a client who needs greater distance and predictability.

Elasticity means responsiveness without abandoning the therapeutic frame. It asks me to think rather than hide behind a rule.

Winnicott: Privacy, Recognition and Being Found

Winnicott offers another way of thinking about the tension between disclosure and privacy. His observation that “it is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found” captures the human need both to retain a private inner core and to feel genuinely recognised by another person (Winnicott, 1963).

For Winnicott, healthy development does not require the whole self to be exposed. There remains an essential part of the person that should not be invaded or forced into communication. Applied to therapy, this suggests that neither client nor therapist should be expected to make everything available. Privacy can be psychologically necessary and protective.

At the same time, excessive therapeutic opacity may leave a client feeling that they cannot emotionally reach me. I may technically preserve anonymity while being experienced as absent, frightened or uninterested. A modest relational disclosure may occasionally help the client feel found without requiring either of us to surrender our separateness.

The challenge is to create a relationship in which the client can feel met by a real person without the therapy becoming organised around my personal life.

Heimann and the Use of Countertransference

Paula Heimann transformed psychoanalytic thinking by describing countertransference as an “instrument of research into the patient’s unconscious” (Heimann, 1950). Rather than seeing all the therapist’s feelings as unwanted interference, she recognised that emotional responses may communicate something important about the client’s internal and relational world.

I may find myself feeling unusually protective, excluded, helpless, pressured, irritated or responsible. These experiences can help me understand something that has not yet been spoken. However, experiencing a feeling does not mean that I should automatically disclose it.

There is an important distinction between using countertransference and discharging it. Frequently, the most therapeutic response is to hold the feeling, reflect upon it and consider what belongs to me, what may have been evoked by the client and what has been created between us. The material may need to be thought about privately or taken to supervision.

Where I do disclose an emotional response, it should be because the disclosure may help the client think—not because I need to relieve my own discomfort, prove that I care or be reassured by the client.

Aron, Renik and the Therapist’s Subjectivity

Relational psychoanalysis has challenged the idea that the therapist can ever be an entirely neutral observer. Lewis Aron emphasised that the client encounters not only an object onto whom earlier experiences are projected, but also the subjectivity of the actual therapist. The client is continually experiencing my tone, silences, expressions, assumptions and ways of responding, whether or not I explicitly reveal personal information (Aron, 1991; 1996).

This does not mean that every perception the client has of me is objectively accurate. Nor does it mean that every difficulty is purely transference. Sometimes a client may experience me as critical because an earlier relationship has become active between us. At other times, something I have genuinely said or done may have been critical, misattuned or poorly timed.

A relational approach requires me to hold both possibilities. Appropriate disclosure may therefore involve acknowledging my contribution to a misunderstanding or rupture. This is not the same as presenting the client with my unprocessed feelings. It is an act of therapeutic accountability.

Owen Renik went further by arguing that the analyst’s subjectivity is irreducible: every clinical observation and intervention is influenced by the therapist’s personal psychology. From this perspective, supposed neutrality may conceal the therapist’s influence rather than remove it (Renik, 1993).

Renik’s position supports greater honesty about therapeutic participation, but I would not interpret it as an argument for unrestricted openness. Recognising that I am subjective does not require me to disclose everything. It requires me to remain aware that my silence, interpretations and decisions not to disclose are also subjective interventions.

Hanna Segal: When Disclosure Becomes Concrete

Hanna Segal did not develop a theory of therapist self-disclosure as such. Nevertheless, her distinction between symbolic representation and symbolic equation offers a particularly valuable way of thinking about how disclosure may be received.

In symbolic representation, a person can recognise that something represents or communicates something else while retaining a sense of difference. In symbolic equation, the symbol and the thing represented become psychologically fused. The distinction between inner experience and external reality becomes more concrete and less flexible (Segal, 1957).

A therapist’s disclosure may be taken symbolically by one client—as one contribution to thinking about the relationship. Another client may experience it concretely. A small piece of personal information may become proof that the therapist is exactly like a parent, is uniquely bonded with the client, prefers the client, needs rescuing or can no longer understand them.

Segal’s thinking reminds me to consider the client’s capacity to use a disclosure reflectively. The issue is not only what I intend to communicate, but whether the disclosure can remain something we think about together or whether it is likely to acquire an overwhelming and fixed meaning.

Betty Joseph and the “Total Situation”

Betty Joseph’s concept of transference as the “total situation” is central to my thinking about self-disclosure. Joseph broadened transference beyond isolated feelings or obvious references to past relationships. She attended to the whole situation being created in the room: the client’s words, silences, tone, defences, actions, the pressure placed upon the therapist and the therapist’s emotional responses (Joseph, 1985).

Joseph did not write her paper specifically as a guide to self-disclosure. However, her approach changes the question I ask. Rather than asking only whether disclosure is permitted, I consider what role the disclosure may play within the total situation.

Am I being drawn into proving that I care? Is the client inviting me to become unusually special, rescuing or confessional? Am I being positioned as withholding or cruel unless I answer? Would disclosure help us understand this pattern, or would it enact the very relationship we need to examine?

The client’s request, my wish to respond, the pressure I experience and the likely consequences of answering are all part of the same relational field. Sometimes disclosure may interrupt an entrenched pattern and create greater freedom. At other times, it may complete an unconscious enactment before either of us has had the opportunity to recognise it.

Joseph’s total situation therefore supports neither automatic disclosure nor automatic withholding. It asks for close attention to what is being lived out between therapist and client in the immediate moment.

A Pluralistic Position

Cooper and McLeod’s pluralistic position begins with the recognition that “lots of different things can be helpful to clients”. Different people may benefit from different methods at different times, and therapeutic decisions should be developed collaboratively rather than dictated solely by allegiance to one theoretical school (Cooper and McLeod, 2011).

For one client, a modest disclosure may reduce shame, strengthen trust or make the therapist feel sufficiently real. For another, the same disclosure may create pressure, comparison or emotional responsibility. A client who has experienced neglect may value an indication that I have been emotionally affected. A client who has spent their life monitoring other people may immediately begin protecting me.

My pluralistic position keeps me responsive to these differences. My psychodynamic position reminds me that the client’s stated preference is not the only relevant consideration. Collaboration is important, but so are unconscious meaning, transference, countertransference and enactment.

Thoughtful Flexibility Rather Than a Rule

I will self-disclose when I believe it is appropriate to the client, the therapeutic relationship and the material. I may disclose to acknowledge my part in a rupture, communicate emotional presence, reduce unnecessary distance or support a particular therapeutic task.

I will also sometimes not disclose. I may decide that the client’s question needs to be explored, that the uncertainty is psychologically meaningful or that disclosure would shift attention away from the client. There will also be occasions when I recognise that my wish to disclose arises from my own need to explain, defend, rescue or be liked.

My aim is to be human without becoming unboundaried, private without becoming emotionally absent, and authentic without confusing authenticity with unrestricted openness. Self-disclosure is not evidence that a therapist is good or bad. What matters is whether the therapist can think about its purpose, recognise its possible meanings, remain accountable for its impact and keep the client’s therapeutic needs at the centre of the work.

References

Aron, L. (1991) ‘The patient’s experience of the analyst’s subjectivity’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1(1), pp. 29–51.

Aron, L. (1996) A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Cooper, M. and McLeod, J. (2011) Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. London: SAGE.

Ferenczi, S. (1928/1955) ‘The elasticity of psycho-analytic technique’, in Balint, M. (ed.) Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 87–101.

Freud, S. (1912/1958) ‘Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-analysis’, in Strachey, J. (ed. and trans.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 111–120.

Heimann, P. (1950) ‘On counter-transference’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 31, pp. 81–84.

Joseph, B. (1985) ‘Transference: the total situation’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66, pp. 447–454.

Renik, O. (1993) ‘Analytic interaction: conceptualizing technique in light of the analyst’s irreducible subjectivity’, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 62(4), pp. 553–571.

Segal, H. (1957) ‘Notes on symbol formation’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 38, pp. 391–397.

Winnicott, D.W. (1963/1965) ‘Communicating and not communicating leading to a study of certain opposites’, in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 179–192.