How Much Light is in the SOLER System?
In discussing Neville Symington recently, I noted in passing his welcome comment about the importance of a therapist's office.
This is a question I spent some time investigating earlier this semester when one of our graduate classes introduced the so-called SOLER recommendations for doing therapy. (SOLER = Sitting Squarely while having an Open posture as you Lean in, maintain Eye contact, and have Relaxed body language.)
I confess upon reading this that I immediately had questions, and so spent a happy few days ransacking the literature going back to the early 1970s to see what it said, and to see if there is a consistent evidence base justifying all these arrangements as a feature of a consulting room. It turns out--as they say in some Scottish trials--that the case is "not proven," or at least not proven to any degree sufficient to convince me.
I do not pretend that what follows is an exhaustive literature review, but I can report the following: One early study (Broekmann and Moller, 1973) yielded ambiguous results, in part because, the authors say, their 30 randomly assigned test subjects were regular students, not patients in therapy. This study found that in some cases students preferred chairs side-by-side, rather than facing each other squarely, but in other situations preferred chairs facing each other squarely but with a large table in between them.
Another old study found that room arrangements differed considerably between patients and therapists: “clients had different preferences for seating arrangements than did counselors. In general, clients preferred spatial arrangements that were more protected than those preferred by the counselors” (Haase and DiMattia, 1976, p.414). Once again, however, both groups of subjects in this experiment were American university students (and all men), not those in therapy, and they were assigned very particular cognitive tasks of learning and conditioning not always found in therapy, so I am not sure how useful these results are. Still, it did uncover that a larger room consistently invited longer verbalization by the subjects than a smaller room. But as for furniture and its arrangements, the results uncovered merely “a marginally significant effect due to furniture arrangements” (p. 419). The authors then conclude that “It would be desirable to replicate this study with a group of actual clients…in addition to analogue studies.”
Further analogue studies from the same time (e.g., Chaikin et al 1976) emphasized the need for a consulting room to be a “warm, intimate” place to facilitate greater self-disclosure. Another focused primarily on the therapist’s attire and office decorations, but said nothing about furniture and its arrangements (Amira and Abramowitz, 1979). More recent research (e.g., Miwa and Hanyu, 2006) also focuses on lighting and decorations while, again, saying little about furniture and its arrangement.
A 2011 study (Nasar and Devlin), also with students, uncovered several interesting findings: a warmer, more intimate space consists largely of using more classical wood materials rather than colder and harder steel and concrete, or brick; plants are very often a encouraging sign of vitality; the display of diplomas almost universally increases perceptions of the clinician’s trustworthiness and credibility; and a messy desk is rated more positively than an excessively neat one (which is seen as somewhat stiff and cold, or as Freud might say, anal retentive!).
A significant difference in this study is that “We sampled real environments: 30 offices used by psychotherapists” (p.311). Test subjects were shown real photographs of offices, mostly in Manhattan. From this it emerged that subjects ranked matters thus: “Neatness and chair comfort were rated as most important, followed by order, space, style, and color. The first two items were judged significantly more important than were the rest” (p. 317). It’s important to note here that the “chair” in question is the therapist’s chair, pictures of which were shown to subjects in this study—the discussion of furniture here was limited to this one chair only. As they note in conclusion, “Although the therapist’s chair was the focus of the photograph that respondents viewed…client seating could be the focus of future study.”
A 2013 study (Devlin et al), using the same method as the study just mentioned from 2011, this time asked a cross-cultural group of subjects to look at pictures of the therapist’s chair and office surrounding it. Here it was found that among student populations in the US, Turkey, and Vietnam (more than 1/3 of whom had been to therapy at least once) there was consensus on things like colour, neatness, perceived “softness” and “orderliness” of the offices, but no substantial comment on furniture arrangement beyond noting that “participants rated chair comfort as highest in importance, and neatness and orderliness among the most important attributes in influencing their judgments” (p.15). Once again, the reference here is to the therapist’s chair only, and nothing was said about its position in the room.
Another 2011 study, a qualitative survey of practicing psychologists, has yielded fascinating data into how they see their offices, how they arrange them, and how strongly they have a desire to have control over such elements. The authors began by admitting that “psychologists’ offices have been largely absent from contemporary theoretical and methodological discussions of therapeutic environments.” They note that “in general, the therapeutic setting should be a holding environment; psychologists and their offices should provide comfortable and secure environments within which clients feel free to communicate sensitive information” (Watkins and Anthony, 2011, p.2). That use of “holding environment” is of course a signature idea of object-relations theory, which these authors explicitly reference several times, especially the works of Winnicott and Klein. I found it very encouraging that they admitted “If necessary, a few psychologists were even willing to rearrange furniture for specific clients” (p.8).
Three other studies recognize a lack of data. Gass (1984) has admitted with commendable candor that “Recommendations that concern the seating arrangement in therapy are based more on intuition than on empirical research,” which accords with my initial suspicions (see below).
In one of the longest and most comprehensive studies I’ve yet found, surveying a wide variety of clinicians (psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors, etc.) in many contexts, the author (Backhaus, 2008) noted that research over the last forty years has rarely focused on arrangements of furniture and related details in consulting rooms before going on to argue that “the seating arrangement in the therapeutic environment is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the physical environment of the therapy room. Based on results from several studies, there does not appear to be one recommended method for seating arrangement” (p.22). Whence comes this controversy she mentions? The author does not say. But it is noteworthy, and reassuring, that there is not one prescribed arrangement everybody must universally follow.
She does go on to tip her hand somewhat, nothing that “in intimate situations, both parties often sit next to each other versus across the room from one another” (p.23). Her most valuable suggestion, to my mind, is that clinicians should be “offering clients several seating options including chairs that can be easily moved” (p.22). I think this is extremely wise: flexibility and a focus on what the person prefers should be uppermost considerations in the design of a consulting room.
The most recent research by Jackson confirms the gap first noted by Gass in 1984. Jackson (2018) admits that “Despite its importance, the subject of the therapist's office has been largely absent from contemporary literature, with a few exceptions.”
Interestingly, she does quote a 1988 book, Psychotherapy Tradecraft: The Technique and Style of Doing Therapy, by a former APA President Theodore Blau, who does have some concrete recommendations over furniture and its arrangement. She quotes him as having “encouraged thoughtful seating options that ‘consider comfort and convenience,’ and that ‘the most comfortable and orthopaedically correct seating possible is strongly recommended in order to avoid back problems’ for the therapist.” She also later avers to “the use of chairs that are moveable or large enough to allow clients to choose their positions, providing a sense of control over their environment” (p. 235). Once again, then, we see there is encouragement to be flexible and have one’s furniture be portable. I find this exactly right and most encouraging.
Beyond peer-reviewed journals other reflections (e.g., Saari, 2002) remain vague about clinical environments, as do APA and a handful of other professional blogs I have seen, which talk in generalities about office design and patient-therapist arrangements, always emphasizing that patient needs come first, which is exactly right.
In sum, then, and putting this preliminary literature review together, then, and recognizing that it doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive but I think fairly representative nonetheless, I have thus far found very little specific, explicit, concrete, and repeated evidence (or even discussion) justifying SOLER.
Given that I’ve not found much evidence so far, I can’t help but return to my original suspicion that perhaps SOLER arrangements began as a personal preference (from someone like Rogers perhaps?) that has then been simply copied by others without much thought or research precisely in the same manner as Freud’s famous couch was almost mindlessly copied with no comment, let alone deeper reflection or empirical study, in the psychoanalytic literature for the better part of a century.
Only very recently, in fact, have two fascinating books been published looking critically at the role of couches: Kravis, 2017; and Gerald, 2019. He himself only justified the couch by saying that he could not stand being looked at for 8 hours a day, but otherwise wrote nothing about the couch, which seems to have been a holdover from his early attempts at using hypnotherapy.
Is it possible, then, that SOLER arrangements remain as undertheorized and under-researched as Freud’s couch? Gass, Backhaus, and Jackson all strongly suggest as much. I think, therefore, that there are strong arguments to be made about alternate arrangements, some of which, some of the time, for some people, may well prove to be more therapeutically effective than SOLER.
Here are my arguments and concerns with the presuppositions in the literature:
Constantly facing people square on presupposes that they want you to do that, that they are comfortable with such an arrangement, and that their progress in therapy will be helped, not hindered, by such an arrangement. I do not make those assumptions, and would want, as part of an intake process or after a preliminary session, to invite people to express their preferences and, at the next and subsequent sessions, to position themselves as they wish. If therapists are there to serve patients, then surely these latter need to have some choice as to posture and position in the consulting room.
Why do I say that? Four reasons. First, as Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and other books in traumatology suggest, severely traumatized patients often feel like they have few or no choices, and feel profoundly disempowered. Giving them even modest choice and power to decide things, she says, is important in therapy.
Second, does SOLER presuppose a Western audience—and even within such an audience presuppose that every “Westerner” is comfortable with such an arrangement? Do we know if other cultures would be equally at home with such an arrangement? I've found little evidence that this question has even occurred to previous researchers apart from the Devlin et al study discussed above. Thus I have to wonder: Is it not possible that some cultures would find a SOLER arrangement if not threatening then at the very least considerably uncomfortable, perhaps so much so that therapeutic progress is attenuated?
Third, my own experience as an analysand of course enters here. I found the couch very helpful in recounting especially bizarre dreams or traumatic memories. These things were hard enough to vocalize to begin with, but I’m quite sure I’d never have gotten into them if I had to face my analyst. (Indeed, for our first three intake sessions, when facing her in a chair, I danced around a lot of stuff, speaking only in extremely vague generalities because I couldn’t talk about certain things while having to make eye contact. Once on the couch, however, it was easier to begin, however gingerly, to wade into deep and dark waters.)
Fourth, I have had difficult conversations with students on campus while walking side-by-side and not facing each other, as well as with my own son, neither of which would, I wager, have gone successfully and smoothly if my interlocutor was forced to look me in the eye the whole time.
For all these reasons, then, I would invite people in my consulting room to one of three arrangements. First would be the SOLER arrangement—two chairs face to face. (Some people, I know, really do prefer that arrangement.) Second would be to have an additional chair placed beside my own, both facing the same direction, slightly angled and with a modest gap (e.g., small table) between them. Thus a person could choose to sit either across from or beside me. The third option would be a couch. And I would invite people to make use of both chairs and the couch as they saw fit, without requiring that they be consistent. Some days they might feel the need to lie down; others to sit but not face me; and still others, to see me and know I’m there. I'm quite happy with their doing whatever they need to from session to session.
There are, I must confess in conclusion, some perhaps more "selfish" reasons connected to the fact that I know my own posture could be misinterpreted, and that my own tolerance for leaning in and constantly facing someone would be diminished if not exhausted after a time. For me, sitting with hands behind my head, or arms crossed, are often postures for me not of being closed, but of being more physically comfortable and thus freed up to listen more carefully. I find that when trying to listen more deeply with my “third ear” (Reik 1948) to hear what else the person might be saying unconsciously or trying to avoid saying, I sometimes find it very helpful not to lean in and maintain eye contact, but to sit back and look off into the distance or even close my eyes, trying to catch, in Eliot’s lovely words,
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Amira, S. and Abramowitz, S.I. (1979). Therapeutic attraction as a function of therapist attire and office furnishings. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1979, 47, 198-200.
Backhaus, K.L. (2008). Client and therapist perspectives on the importance of the physical environment of the therapy room: A mixed methods study. Doctoral dissertation at Texas Women’s University.
Broekmann, N.C. and Moller, A.T. (1973). Preferred seating position and distance in various situations. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 20, 504-508.
Devlin, A.S. Nasar, J.L., and Cubukcu, Ebru (2013). Students’ impressions of psychotherapists’ offices: cross-cultural comparisons. Environment and Behavior, 20, 1–26.
Devlin, A. S., and Nasar, J. L. (2012). Impressions of psychotherapists’ offices: Do therapists and clients agree? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 43, 118-122.
Gass, C.S. (1984). Therapeutic influence as a function of therapist attire and the seating arrangement in an initial interview. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 40, 52-57.
Gerald, Mark (2019). In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in Their Offices. London: Routledge.
Jackson, Devlin (2018). Aesthetics and the psychotherapist’s office. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74, 233-238.
Kravis, Nathan (2017). The Couch: a Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud. Boston: MIT Press.
Nassar, J. and Devlin, A. (2011). Impressions of psychotherapists’ offices. Journal of Counseling Psychology 58, 310 –320.
Reik, Theodore (1948). Listening with the Third Ear: the Inner Experience of a Psychoanalyst. New York: Farrar Strauss & Co.
Saari, Carolyn (2002). The Environment: Its Role in Psychosocial Functioning and Psychotherapy. New York: Columbia University Press.
Yoshiko Miwa, and Kazunori Hanyu (2006). The effects of interior design on communication and impressions of a counselor in a counseling room. Environment and Behavior, 38, 484-502.
Watkins, N.J. and Anthony, K.H. (2011). The design of psychologists’ offices: A qualitative evaluation of environment-function fit.
This is a question I spent some time investigating earlier this semester when one of our graduate classes introduced the so-called SOLER recommendations for doing therapy. (SOLER = Sitting Squarely while having an Open posture as you Lean in, maintain Eye contact, and have Relaxed body language.)
I confess upon reading this that I immediately had questions, and so spent a happy few days ransacking the literature going back to the early 1970s to see what it said, and to see if there is a consistent evidence base justifying all these arrangements as a feature of a consulting room. It turns out--as they say in some Scottish trials--that the case is "not proven," or at least not proven to any degree sufficient to convince me.
I do not pretend that what follows is an exhaustive literature review, but I can report the following: One early study (Broekmann and Moller, 1973) yielded ambiguous results, in part because, the authors say, their 30 randomly assigned test subjects were regular students, not patients in therapy. This study found that in some cases students preferred chairs side-by-side, rather than facing each other squarely, but in other situations preferred chairs facing each other squarely but with a large table in between them.
Another old study found that room arrangements differed considerably between patients and therapists: “clients had different preferences for seating arrangements than did counselors. In general, clients preferred spatial arrangements that were more protected than those preferred by the counselors” (Haase and DiMattia, 1976, p.414). Once again, however, both groups of subjects in this experiment were American university students (and all men), not those in therapy, and they were assigned very particular cognitive tasks of learning and conditioning not always found in therapy, so I am not sure how useful these results are. Still, it did uncover that a larger room consistently invited longer verbalization by the subjects than a smaller room. But as for furniture and its arrangements, the results uncovered merely “a marginally significant effect due to furniture arrangements” (p. 419). The authors then conclude that “It would be desirable to replicate this study with a group of actual clients…in addition to analogue studies.”
Further analogue studies from the same time (e.g., Chaikin et al 1976) emphasized the need for a consulting room to be a “warm, intimate” place to facilitate greater self-disclosure. Another focused primarily on the therapist’s attire and office decorations, but said nothing about furniture and its arrangements (Amira and Abramowitz, 1979). More recent research (e.g., Miwa and Hanyu, 2006) also focuses on lighting and decorations while, again, saying little about furniture and its arrangement.
A 2011 study (Nasar and Devlin), also with students, uncovered several interesting findings: a warmer, more intimate space consists largely of using more classical wood materials rather than colder and harder steel and concrete, or brick; plants are very often a encouraging sign of vitality; the display of diplomas almost universally increases perceptions of the clinician’s trustworthiness and credibility; and a messy desk is rated more positively than an excessively neat one (which is seen as somewhat stiff and cold, or as Freud might say, anal retentive!).
A significant difference in this study is that “We sampled real environments: 30 offices used by psychotherapists” (p.311). Test subjects were shown real photographs of offices, mostly in Manhattan. From this it emerged that subjects ranked matters thus: “Neatness and chair comfort were rated as most important, followed by order, space, style, and color. The first two items were judged significantly more important than were the rest” (p. 317). It’s important to note here that the “chair” in question is the therapist’s chair, pictures of which were shown to subjects in this study—the discussion of furniture here was limited to this one chair only. As they note in conclusion, “Although the therapist’s chair was the focus of the photograph that respondents viewed…client seating could be the focus of future study.”
A 2013 study (Devlin et al), using the same method as the study just mentioned from 2011, this time asked a cross-cultural group of subjects to look at pictures of the therapist’s chair and office surrounding it. Here it was found that among student populations in the US, Turkey, and Vietnam (more than 1/3 of whom had been to therapy at least once) there was consensus on things like colour, neatness, perceived “softness” and “orderliness” of the offices, but no substantial comment on furniture arrangement beyond noting that “participants rated chair comfort as highest in importance, and neatness and orderliness among the most important attributes in influencing their judgments” (p.15). Once again, the reference here is to the therapist’s chair only, and nothing was said about its position in the room.
Another 2011 study, a qualitative survey of practicing psychologists, has yielded fascinating data into how they see their offices, how they arrange them, and how strongly they have a desire to have control over such elements. The authors began by admitting that “psychologists’ offices have been largely absent from contemporary theoretical and methodological discussions of therapeutic environments.” They note that “in general, the therapeutic setting should be a holding environment; psychologists and their offices should provide comfortable and secure environments within which clients feel free to communicate sensitive information” (Watkins and Anthony, 2011, p.2). That use of “holding environment” is of course a signature idea of object-relations theory, which these authors explicitly reference several times, especially the works of Winnicott and Klein. I found it very encouraging that they admitted “If necessary, a few psychologists were even willing to rearrange furniture for specific clients” (p.8).
Three other studies recognize a lack of data. Gass (1984) has admitted with commendable candor that “Recommendations that concern the seating arrangement in therapy are based more on intuition than on empirical research,” which accords with my initial suspicions (see below).
In one of the longest and most comprehensive studies I’ve yet found, surveying a wide variety of clinicians (psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors, etc.) in many contexts, the author (Backhaus, 2008) noted that research over the last forty years has rarely focused on arrangements of furniture and related details in consulting rooms before going on to argue that “the seating arrangement in the therapeutic environment is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the physical environment of the therapy room. Based on results from several studies, there does not appear to be one recommended method for seating arrangement” (p.22). Whence comes this controversy she mentions? The author does not say. But it is noteworthy, and reassuring, that there is not one prescribed arrangement everybody must universally follow.
She does go on to tip her hand somewhat, nothing that “in intimate situations, both parties often sit next to each other versus across the room from one another” (p.23). Her most valuable suggestion, to my mind, is that clinicians should be “offering clients several seating options including chairs that can be easily moved” (p.22). I think this is extremely wise: flexibility and a focus on what the person prefers should be uppermost considerations in the design of a consulting room.
The most recent research by Jackson confirms the gap first noted by Gass in 1984. Jackson (2018) admits that “Despite its importance, the subject of the therapist's office has been largely absent from contemporary literature, with a few exceptions.”
Interestingly, she does quote a 1988 book, Psychotherapy Tradecraft: The Technique and Style of Doing Therapy, by a former APA President Theodore Blau, who does have some concrete recommendations over furniture and its arrangement. She quotes him as having “encouraged thoughtful seating options that ‘consider comfort and convenience,’ and that ‘the most comfortable and orthopaedically correct seating possible is strongly recommended in order to avoid back problems’ for the therapist.” She also later avers to “the use of chairs that are moveable or large enough to allow clients to choose their positions, providing a sense of control over their environment” (p. 235). Once again, then, we see there is encouragement to be flexible and have one’s furniture be portable. I find this exactly right and most encouraging.
Beyond peer-reviewed journals other reflections (e.g., Saari, 2002) remain vague about clinical environments, as do APA and a handful of other professional blogs I have seen, which talk in generalities about office design and patient-therapist arrangements, always emphasizing that patient needs come first, which is exactly right.
In sum, then, and putting this preliminary literature review together, then, and recognizing that it doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive but I think fairly representative nonetheless, I have thus far found very little specific, explicit, concrete, and repeated evidence (or even discussion) justifying SOLER.
Given that I’ve not found much evidence so far, I can’t help but return to my original suspicion that perhaps SOLER arrangements began as a personal preference (from someone like Rogers perhaps?) that has then been simply copied by others without much thought or research precisely in the same manner as Freud’s famous couch was almost mindlessly copied with no comment, let alone deeper reflection or empirical study, in the psychoanalytic literature for the better part of a century.
Only very recently, in fact, have two fascinating books been published looking critically at the role of couches: Kravis, 2017; and Gerald, 2019. He himself only justified the couch by saying that he could not stand being looked at for 8 hours a day, but otherwise wrote nothing about the couch, which seems to have been a holdover from his early attempts at using hypnotherapy.
Is it possible, then, that SOLER arrangements remain as undertheorized and under-researched as Freud’s couch? Gass, Backhaus, and Jackson all strongly suggest as much. I think, therefore, that there are strong arguments to be made about alternate arrangements, some of which, some of the time, for some people, may well prove to be more therapeutically effective than SOLER.
Here are my arguments and concerns with the presuppositions in the literature:
Constantly facing people square on presupposes that they want you to do that, that they are comfortable with such an arrangement, and that their progress in therapy will be helped, not hindered, by such an arrangement. I do not make those assumptions, and would want, as part of an intake process or after a preliminary session, to invite people to express their preferences and, at the next and subsequent sessions, to position themselves as they wish. If therapists are there to serve patients, then surely these latter need to have some choice as to posture and position in the consulting room.
Why do I say that? Four reasons. First, as Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and other books in traumatology suggest, severely traumatized patients often feel like they have few or no choices, and feel profoundly disempowered. Giving them even modest choice and power to decide things, she says, is important in therapy.
Second, does SOLER presuppose a Western audience—and even within such an audience presuppose that every “Westerner” is comfortable with such an arrangement? Do we know if other cultures would be equally at home with such an arrangement? I've found little evidence that this question has even occurred to previous researchers apart from the Devlin et al study discussed above. Thus I have to wonder: Is it not possible that some cultures would find a SOLER arrangement if not threatening then at the very least considerably uncomfortable, perhaps so much so that therapeutic progress is attenuated?
Third, my own experience as an analysand of course enters here. I found the couch very helpful in recounting especially bizarre dreams or traumatic memories. These things were hard enough to vocalize to begin with, but I’m quite sure I’d never have gotten into them if I had to face my analyst. (Indeed, for our first three intake sessions, when facing her in a chair, I danced around a lot of stuff, speaking only in extremely vague generalities because I couldn’t talk about certain things while having to make eye contact. Once on the couch, however, it was easier to begin, however gingerly, to wade into deep and dark waters.)
Fourth, I have had difficult conversations with students on campus while walking side-by-side and not facing each other, as well as with my own son, neither of which would, I wager, have gone successfully and smoothly if my interlocutor was forced to look me in the eye the whole time.
For all these reasons, then, I would invite people in my consulting room to one of three arrangements. First would be the SOLER arrangement—two chairs face to face. (Some people, I know, really do prefer that arrangement.) Second would be to have an additional chair placed beside my own, both facing the same direction, slightly angled and with a modest gap (e.g., small table) between them. Thus a person could choose to sit either across from or beside me. The third option would be a couch. And I would invite people to make use of both chairs and the couch as they saw fit, without requiring that they be consistent. Some days they might feel the need to lie down; others to sit but not face me; and still others, to see me and know I’m there. I'm quite happy with their doing whatever they need to from session to session.
There are, I must confess in conclusion, some perhaps more "selfish" reasons connected to the fact that I know my own posture could be misinterpreted, and that my own tolerance for leaning in and constantly facing someone would be diminished if not exhausted after a time. For me, sitting with hands behind my head, or arms crossed, are often postures for me not of being closed, but of being more physically comfortable and thus freed up to listen more carefully. I find that when trying to listen more deeply with my “third ear” (Reik 1948) to hear what else the person might be saying unconsciously or trying to avoid saying, I sometimes find it very helpful not to lean in and maintain eye contact, but to sit back and look off into the distance or even close my eyes, trying to catch, in Eliot’s lovely words,
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
++++++++++++++++++
REFERENCES:
Amira, S. and Abramowitz, S.I. (1979). Therapeutic attraction as a function of therapist attire and office furnishings. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1979, 47, 198-200.
Backhaus, K.L. (2008). Client and therapist perspectives on the importance of the physical environment of the therapy room: A mixed methods study. Doctoral dissertation at Texas Women’s University.
Broekmann, N.C. and Moller, A.T. (1973). Preferred seating position and distance in various situations. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 20, 504-508.
Devlin, A.S. Nasar, J.L., and Cubukcu, Ebru (2013). Students’ impressions of psychotherapists’ offices: cross-cultural comparisons. Environment and Behavior, 20, 1–26.
Devlin, A. S., and Nasar, J. L. (2012). Impressions of psychotherapists’ offices: Do therapists and clients agree? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 43, 118-122.
Gass, C.S. (1984). Therapeutic influence as a function of therapist attire and the seating arrangement in an initial interview. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 40, 52-57.
Gerald, Mark (2019). In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in Their Offices. London: Routledge.
Jackson, Devlin (2018). Aesthetics and the psychotherapist’s office. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74, 233-238.
Kravis, Nathan (2017). The Couch: a Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud. Boston: MIT Press.
Nassar, J. and Devlin, A. (2011). Impressions of psychotherapists’ offices. Journal of Counseling Psychology 58, 310 –320.
Reik, Theodore (1948). Listening with the Third Ear: the Inner Experience of a Psychoanalyst. New York: Farrar Strauss & Co.
Saari, Carolyn (2002). The Environment: Its Role in Psychosocial Functioning and Psychotherapy. New York: Columbia University Press.
Yoshiko Miwa, and Kazunori Hanyu (2006). The effects of interior design on communication and impressions of a counselor in a counseling room. Environment and Behavior, 38, 484-502.
Watkins, N.J. and Anthony, K.H. (2011). The design of psychologists’ offices: A qualitative evaluation of environment-function fit.
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