About Us

A bit of history: Professor Farber has been doing psychotherapy research in one form or another since the late 1970s. His doctoral dissertation was on the effects of doing psychotherapy on the therapist (thankfully, these effects are mostly, though not exclusively, positive). Since then, he’s collaborated on studies on representational processes in therapy (i.e., the ways that therapists, patients, and supervisees form and use internalized representations of their dyadic partner to influence the work of therapy and supervision); on the nature and consequences of psychological-mindedness in therapists and patients; on the effects of performing therapy on the therapist’s significant other and children; on stress and burnout in therapists; on the ways in which the therapist functions as an attachment figure; on the nature of “informal” supervision among therapy trainees; and on the phenomenon of therapists “ghosting” their patients. Most recently, he’s begun work on a project (with current doctoral students Shana Dickstein and Mossie Lierle; former student and now colleague, David Roe; and several MA students) investigating the ways in which individuals construct and evoke representations of past significant others.

However, most of his work in the last 20 years—and most of the work of the various research labs­­—has been focused in two areas: the nature and consequences of positive regard in psychotherapy; and the nature and consequences of self-disclosure in psychotherapy. The work on positive regard, including studies of the ways that therapists and clients view the most salient aspects of this attitude, has led to multiple conference presentations, journal articles, and recently (2022), a book, co-authored by two doctoral students, Jessi Suzuki and Daisy Ort: Understanding and enhancing positive regard in psychotherapy: Carl Rogers and beyond. In regard to the work on self-disclosure: the earliest research in this area (early 1990s) was on patient disclosure (i.e., what patients do and don’t tell their therapists). Subsequently, with the help of numerous doctoral and MA students, this work has expanded both in terms of scope and modes of inquiry, Thus, investigations in this general area have now included qualitative and quantitative research on self-disclosure among therapists and supervisees; the costs and benefits of self-disclosure in therapy among women who have been abused; the temporal dimensions of client disclosure; cross-cultural differences in client disclosure; differences in disclosure patterns in therapy vs significant personal relationships; patient disclosure about therapy to significant others; the relationship of patient attachment status to disclosure in therapy; the nature, motives, and consequences of patients’ secrets and lies; the nature and consequences of therapists’ patterns of dishonesty; and the nature of disclosure and deception among eating disordered patients. This work, too, has led to multiple presentations and journal publications; it has also led to the publication of two books: Self-disclosure in psychotherapy (2006); and, with co-authors Matt Blanchard and Melanie Love, Secrets and lies in psychotherapy (2019).