To Be Directive or Non-Directive: That Is the Question

"It was a gray winter afternoon early in my career when my client-let's call him Dan-stormed into my office, visibly angry. "I lost my f-ing job again because I told my boss the project sucked," he said. Dan was relatively new to therapy and known for reacting impulsively in social and work settings, often to his own detriment. My instinct kicked in: help him see what he could have done differently."

"But what Dan really wanted was for me to listen-without jumping in, without steering. He was asking for what therapists call a non-directive approach: one where the client leads and the therapist listens deeply, offering empathy, reflection, and a sense of safety. The challenge? I was trained-and naturally inclined-to take a more directive stance: guiding, interpreting, teaching skills, and confronting issues head-on."

"The right level of direction in therapy depends on context, not one fixed style. A crisis may require structure; reflection grows more in open space. Flexibility in approach is the real clinical art. So the question that still echoes in my mind is this: How directive or non-directive should a therapist be? Therapy began as largely non-directive. Freud's psychoanalysis and Carl Rogers' person-centered therapy both emphasized insight through reflection and self-discovery rather than therapist instruction."

A therapist encountered an angry client who wanted to be heard rather than instructed, revealing tensions between directive and non-directive stances. Non-directive therapy emphasizes client-led reflection, empathy, and trust in innate healing, while directive approaches teach skills, interpret, and confront issues. Historically, therapy began non-directive with Freud and Rogers, then shifted mid-century toward structured methods like CBT. Clinical decisions about how much direction to provide should depend on client presentation and context: crises often benefit from clear structure, while open problems benefit from reflective space. Skilled clinicians flexibly adapt their stance to meet each client's needs.

Read at Psychology Today