Would you want your therapist to ask for your feedback regularly?

In a healthy relationship either person should be able to give feedback spontaneously. If the client is only expected to give feedback when formally asked, that seems paternalistic and controlling and just downright weird. I would be bothered by it.

Seems therapists get confused and think they are overseeing some controlled process, and thus need to collect data like a scientist. Seems really bizarre to try to quantify "performance" in a human relationship. It suggests that they are acting and would adopt a new persona if the client didn't like the current one.

Hard to believe, but I have agreed with a BF post.

I read most of the article--until I found it too tedious and flawed to continue (when it started talking about thermometers). Feedback is great and can take many forms and should be part of the give and take of a relationship. But what I'm seeing described is not what I would define as feedback, but rather as evaluation. Just as I resent vendors asking me to evaluate customer service (evaluation of a company's employees isn't my job--it should be the job of someone being paid by the company), a metrics driven approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a complex human endeavor is deceptive. The ability to break down a runner's stride into infinitely smaller parts is helpful because running is a discrete, repetitive, physical action. Therapy is an entirely different animal.

I liken it to "teacher assessments": the metrics will always be incomplete at best and completely wrong headed at worst. The system employing the evaluations will always abuse them either through a lack of comprehension of data interpretation and/or the purposes they are inappropriately used for (interestingly, there is more and more research coming out showing the failure of models of performance evaluation in education and the detriment of their influence on educational systems).

Feedback, in my case from students, is immensely valuable because it gives me insight into how my interventions are perceived. But such feedback tells me little about whether my interventions have been understood by an individual student (tests and other student performance tasks tell me far more), nor does it speak in any way to whether I am a "good" teacher or not. En masse, discrete results of discrete tasks can be helpful--for instance, if most students interpret a test question in a way I hadn't intended, it indicates a problem with the question--it doesn't indicate poor student performance. But an individual student evaluation is meaningless because it reflects the student far more than the teacher.

So what if an entire class answers the question, "The teacher begins class on-time" in the negative--surely that means the teacher is not punctual? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Perhaps the teacher arrives on-time, but for pedagogical reasons, begins the class by circulating among the students addressing individual students briefly about non-class related matters? Just because the students perceive this activity as indicative of non-punctuality doesn't mean it isn't valuable (or that it is about punctuality). OTOH, a teacher who enters the room 10 minutes past the start time every meeting, clearly is not starting the class on time. But the metric doesn't distinguish intentions/motivations behind what appears to be a discrete behavior.

OK, so let's take the flaw of metrics out of it and look to human observation for assessment. Less algorithmic, but maybe a better match in complexity. Sounds good, but the problem with a teacher observation is that it can only assess what is visible. An observer can see what I do and hear what I say, but cannot see what I don't do, nor hear what I don't say. And in pedagogy, what is unseen and unsaid and the reasons for each can be of utmost importance. I would say the same is true of therapy. A report of a session cannot reflect such variables. Supervision, consisting of in-depth discussion of a session can come closer--but then, its value will depend upon the competence of the supervisor, so back to the same issue.

An example in the article is a client who regularly answers that the skills she's been taught are helpful, yet the metrics indicate she's suicidal. When the T presses further--and makes inquiries at a deeper level--the client reveals she feels worse. It was reported earlier in the account that the client repeatedly looked away when reporting that the skills were helpful. My question would be: why didn't the T notice this before being alerted to a problem by the metrics? While it may be valuable that the metrics alerted this T to delve more deeply, it seems to me the problem here is that the T's performance shows poor training/competence/professionalism to begin with. Missing such an obvious cue to emotional state indicates a T who's lacking. Will the metrics simply "bail out" sub-standard Ts, or be used as evaluative tools to get them further training? I see no reason to believe that metrics can ever evolve into practice to the level of complexity that would be necessary to really remedy inadequate practice. And it seems to shift the supervisory burden to the client in a deceptively facile way.

i agree that in a healthy relationship both parties should be able to freely and honestly bring up concerns in the relationship, but where i find this idea of asking for feedback to be helpful would be for those clients who may be new to the process of therapy or the relationship and who may not have the skills, due to a lack of confidence, assertiveness, lack of trust, or other underlying fear to honestly speak up and let their T know that there may be issues in the therapy. this is evident many times here on this and other forums by those who seek feedback and support for something their T did or didn't do, but they do not have the confidence yet to bring that topic up to their T on their own.

my ex-T did ask and gently probed for feedback in the early days of therapy with him, but as time went on and as i started to trust him more, i began to gain the confidence to freely speak up when something in therapy or the relationship was not working or was bothering me. i reckon that this feedback process is not only good for the T, but at helping to reassure the client that their concerns are ok to bring up and will be acknowledged.

There's probably no point in providing feedback if nothing is done about it or it's chalked up as transference or the feedback is attributed to personality problems. (That's what I've seen in books/articles by therapists).

OTOH, progress against realistic client-driven goals can be measured adequately. I think it's good to pause every so often and discuss how the therapy is progressing or not.

Never mind. Just read other posts and see that I answered the wrong questions and the issue I noted was already addressed.

Come to think of it, most of us get performance evaluations at work by those who employ us. Why not therapists?

And I get customer satisfaction and improvement questionnaires all the time from businesses and even my health care provider. But never a therapist.

Yes, but not weekly. Maybe every 3 months of so. Maybe anonymously, if possible. Not everyone has the courage to be completely honest if T knows from who it is.
T's can surely use feedback. Whether they have been a T for only 5 years or for 50 years.

I had one therapist who asked me at our last session, but I don't think I'd like that on some type of schedule. I've had so many therapists that I think now I'd be the one to say what she's doing is not helping or might need to be adjusted!

No and yes. I worked with my t for 4 years now and she never once did a review, my first t did one every six weeks and I had to pay her to do her stupid reviews for the whole session. Do them in your on damn time, or afterwards, I could have stayed back ten minutes with her. I wish ex t would do them sometimes after our many ruptures but she never did and now I appreciate that because I told her what was going wrong and what wasn't working, it forced me to finally say what I was feeling.
I think that sometimes they get in the way of the process. What is happening between you and your t is the review to me. I think if a t is open to hear your opinions, you don't need a review.