In her master's thesis, the author was interested in the changes and challenges that marital and family therapists faced in their personal and professional lives during pregnancy. She researched how developmental challenges and tasks during the pregnancy prepare therapists for the new family developmental period and how they affect therapeutic work. One of the developmental challenges is certainly the achievement of the motherhood status, which can divert the attention of the therapists from achieving professional goals to forming a relationship with the fetus. Although the interest in working may decrease during the pregnancy, this does not mean that their therapeutic work is a lower quality. Both the pregnancy and the emotional and physical changes it triggers can lead to new qualities and opportunities for the emotional growth of clients and therapists in the therapeutic relationship.
For her research the author used the method of the grounded theory on empirical data obtained from semi-structured interviews of marital and family therapists who performed therapeutic work at the time of their pregnancy. She identified changes that were taking place in their private lives and in the therapeutic process at the time of pregnancy. With the open in axial coding, the author identified two main areas: developmental challenges and the tasks of the therapists and a changed therapeutic process. The experience of marital and family therapists which is covered in each of the mentioned areas was then presented in more detail by the author with individual categories in made a comparison with the findings of earlier researches. In her research, the author established that marital and family therapists encountered with both positive and negative effects of pregnancy in the therapeutic process. The pregnancy has brought new qualities into work with the clients in the therapy, as clients have introduced new reactions and contents into the therapy. Therapists thus faced the challenge of limiting their own personal reactions when faced with the stories of their clients that, due to the pregnancy, aroused more intense feelings in them.
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