“Us and them” and the space in between: an interpretive phenomenological analysis of the experiences of working-class clients with middle-class therapists

This research explored the experiences of clients who self-identified as working-class and had undergone relational therapy with a practitioner they perceived to be from a middle-class background. An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach was adopted, due to it its focus on individual experience and recognition of the double hermeneutic.

A total of six women aged between 28 and 43 were recruited for the research. They had seen their therapist for between 10 weeks and seven years, and four of the participants attended therapy in their therapist’s home. That therapy had ended at least three months prior to the research interview. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants online, and lasted up to an hour.

The analysis identified three superordinate themes: ‘a meeting of two worlds’, ‘class in the implicit relationship’ and ‘managing difference’. Clients entered therapy with previous negative experiences of classism and a recognition of their perceived position in the social hierarchy; this had significant impact on the therapy, but where therapists were experienced as empathic and genuinely interested in the client’s world, there was potential for the experience to be reparative.

The findings invite therapists to speak about social class with their clients, and to break the wider social silence which too often exists around class. It encourages therapists and training institutions to explore what are often middle-class frameworks of agency and pathology, and to address classist attitudes toward working-class clients. In turn, this can support clients to challenge the wider discrimination in their own lives, including that which they have internalised.

The findings are in accordance with previous research looking at the experiences of working-class clients, although this has been very limited. They contribute significantly to our understanding of working-class clients’ experiences of class differences in relational therapy, and is the first such IPA study into this topic to be conducted in the UK-context. The findings suggest that class is a significant aspect of clients’ identities and experiences, and further studies could explore the experiences of those who drop-out of therapy early, or those with specific intersectional experiences.