Clinical intuition in psychotherapy: an approach based on Grounded Theory ( La intuición clínica en psicoterapia: una aproximación desde la Teoría Fundamentada )

Abstract

The traditional theories about intuition emerged from the study of decision-making, and consider it a typical expert judgment or a heuristic process that generates erroneous decisions. Research into clinical intuition is currently growing, although there are few studies focused on psychotherapy and not associated with a specific theoretical orientation. The purpose of this study was to analyse the use of clinical intuition in psychotherapy, comparing psychological schools. Ten Spanish psychotherapists with at least four years’ experience participated in the study. It had a qualitative design and was based on Grounded Theory. The results found that all professionals use intuition similarly in a bottom-up and non-linear process that captures incongruous information, allowing them to quickly organize complex information and establish working hypotheses that they then contrast with reality, preventing them from functioning heuristically. There is a need for further research on clinical intuition as a common factor of therapy success, and into its possible applications to improve the training and supervision of psychotherapists.