Self-disclosure of the therapist in the treatment of gifted children and adolescents

Abstract

The issue of whether or not to reveal personal details about myself during treatment sessions of gifted children in order to help them solve various problems has first occurred to me after the publication of my book There is another way: Girls and women – Achievements and challenges (Zorman & David, 2000). As my co-author, Dr. Zorman, was living in the US after its publication, I was the only author who had to handle the radio, television and written press interviews, as well as answer the direct questions from the audience in the many lectures I had been invited to give or to participate in. The most frequent questions were “do you have a gifted daughter” or “are your daughters gifted”? I always answered: “I do not have daughters”. Since then the issue of self-disclosure of the therapist of the gifted has not much developed; today's presentation intends to start a discussion about this important issue, and hopefully result in more qualitative and quantitative research, and some insights that will help counselors, therapists, gifted children and adolescents and their parents. Some personal details seem to be of enormous importance to many patients and some others are less important. For example: a female child therapist who is not a mother might encounter initial suspicion or distrust from the child’s parents. Furthermore: when the therapist is perceived by the parents as belonging to a certain religious group, ethnic origin, political party member or having non-traditional views regarding nationality, life-style, gender preference or any other area significant to the family in therapy, sometimes it seems almost impossible to continue the therapy without disclosing some details about the counselor's life. Various details about the therapist are revealed during treatment, but they must be relevant to the advancement of the treatment. When the child in therapy is gifted, their chronological age does not matter that much. Any therapist of gifted children should be prepared to questions about their family situation, their beliefs, their educational choices, even their taste in the design of the clinic, their plastic surgeries or their love-experiences. Here are some such examples, and potential ways of answering them.