Shaping the Therapist, Shaping the Field: A Narrative Review of the Person-of-the-Therapist Training (POTT) Approach

Abstract

The Person-of-the-Therapist Training approach is a relational framework that supports therapists in intentionally integrating personal experience into clinical work. Despite its growing presence in couple/marriage and family therapy training, no comprehensive synthesis has traced POTT's historical development, empirical foundations, and contemporary relevance. This narrative review employed a structured literature search and thematic synthesis of 30 sources published between 1987 and 2024. Three developmental periods are described: philosophical foundations emphasizing therapist personhood, institutionalized training with emerging qualitative evidence, and recent global, sociocultural, and supervisory expansions. Across three periods, the literature reflects increasing conceptual clarity, pedagogical structure, and attention to ethical and embodied therapeutic presence. Implications include the need for increasing the transportability of POTT, expanding its empirical base, and employing it in diverse supervision contexts. In an era of technological mediation and artificial relationality, POTT clarifies the importance of the embodied, ethical, and human-centered psychotherapy dimensions.