Claus Haugaard Jacobsen, Jan Nielsen & Birgit Bork Mathiesen: Factors in psychotherapists’ professional development – relational and empirical perspectives with inspiration from developmental psychopathology.

We present a review of recent investigations in the professional development of psychotherapists using the framework of developmental psychopathology. Empirical evidence of the personal characteristics of psychotherapists is presented and taken into consideration in a discussion of "fundamental qualifications" thought to be crucial for psychotherapists. Furthermore, empirical evidence of key factors such as the amount and quality of practice, supervision, personal psychotherapy and experiences in personal life are presented and discussed. This paper forms the theoretical background for our coming report on the results of an empirical study of the professional development of approximately 350 Danish psychotherapists.