Training the Person of the Therapist in an Academic Setting

Drexel University’s Couple and Family Therapy Department recently introduced a formal course on training the person of a therapist. The course is based on Aponte’s Person‐of‐the‐Therapist Training Model that up until now has only been applied in private, nonacademic institutes with postgraduate therapists. The model attempts to put into practice a philosophy that views the full person of therapists, and their personal vulnerabilities in particular, as the central tool through which therapists do their work in the context of the client–therapist relationship. This article offers a description of how this model has been tested with a group of volunteer students, and subsequently what had to be considered to formally structure the training into the Drexel curriculum.