About

Clara E. Hill retired from the University of Maryland in 2023. She earned her Ph.D. at Southern Illinois University in 1974 and began her career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland the same year. Her major research interests include helping skills, psychotherapy process and outcome, training therapists, dream work, qualitative research, and meaning in life. Hill has made significant contributions to the field through her extensive publications, which include over 220 journal articles, more than 65 chapters in books, and 14 books such as Helping Skills, Dream Work in Therapy, Insight in Psychotherapy, Transformation in Psychotherapy, Consensual Qualitative Research, and Meaning in Life. She has served as President of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, Editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology, and Co-Editor of Psychotherapy Research. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Leona Tyler Award from the Society of Counseling Psychology, the Distinguished Psychologist Award from Division 29 of the American Psychological Association, the Distinguished Research Career Award from the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award from the Section on Counseling and Psychotherapy Process and Outcome Research of the Society for Counseling Psychology.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Applied psychology
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Psychotherapist

Selected publications

• Psychotherapy with religious/spiritual Jewish clients: Reflections from religious/spiritual Jewish therapists

  Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health · 2025-08-28

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• Exploring the wish to feel special: a collaborative autoethnography of six psychotherapy researchers

  Counselling Psychology Quarterly · 2025-10-22

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• Dyadic working alliance, therapist insight skills, and client outcomes: Longitudinal mediation analyses.

  Psychotherapy · 2025-01-13 · 1 citations

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  perspective. Thus, we examined whether (a) dyadic insight skills are indirectly related to client outcome through the working alliance and (b) the dyadic working alliance is indirectly related to client outcome through insight skills. The dyadic working alliance was measured as a latent, dyadic average of both the client and therapists' reports of the working alliance. Therapist use of insight skills was operationalized via the use of skills such as interpretations, immediacies, challenges, and disclosures of insight. We used dynamic structural equation modeling to analyze longitudinal data in long-term, psychodynamic treatment. Results indicated that at the within-client level, the use of insight skills was associated with the working alliance in the next session, and the working alliance was associated with therapist use of insight skills in the next session; however, there were no mediation effects. However, at the between-client level, the pathway from working alliance at T-1 to therapist use of insight skills at T-2 to client outcome at T-3 was significant but only for clients in longer term treatments. Findings reveal the importance of the working alliance as a signal for therapists to use insight skills for client improvement in long-term, psychodynamic therapy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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• Crying, laughter, and silence in psychodynamic psychotherapy for anxiously and avoidantly attached clients

  Counselling Psychology Quarterly · 2025-02-19 · 1 citations

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• Requests by anxiously and avoidantly attached clients in psychodynamic psychotherapy: Client demandingness, therapist responsiveness, and changes in client collaboration

  Counselling Psychology Quarterly · 2025-04-18

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• Session evaluation scale: psychometric evaluation and development of short versions

  Psychotherapy Research · 2025-11-26 · 2 citations

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  OBJECTIVE: To test the psychometric properties of the five-item patient-rated Session Evaluation Scale (SES-P) (Study 1) and to create a three-item version (Study 2), and to test the psychometric properties of the five-item (Study 3) and three-item (Study 4) therapist-rated version (SES-T). METHOD: = 151) completed their respective versions of the SES along with other measures. Psychometric evaluation involved descriptive item analysis, item response theory analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and multigroup CFA. Reliability and validity were also assessed. Psychometric scale shortening employed item response theory analysis. RESULTS: The patient- and therapist-forms of the five-item SES demonstrated strong psychometric properties, including excellent internal reliability (omega total ≥ .80), a clear unidimensional structure (CFI ≥ .95), and full measurement invariance across in-person and video-based session formats (tested only for the patient-form). The three-item versions retain sound psychometric properties (CFI ≥ .95; omega total > .75) and their scores demonstrated strong agreement and minimal bias with the five-item SES scores (Bland-Altman regression average discrepancy ranged from 0.227 to 0.282 points). CONCLUSION: The SES-P and SES-T, especially in their ultra-short form, are reliable and psychometrically robust instruments for nuanced evaluation of session quality.

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• Revisiting and reenvisioning the outcome problem in psychotherapy: An argument to include individualized and qualitative measurement.

  American Psychological Association eBooks · 2024-01-01

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• Almost Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About How To Do Process Research on Counseling and Psychotherapy but Didn't Know Who To Ask

  2024-04-29 · 11 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The purpose of this chapter is to define process research and discuss the steps involved in doing a process study. My emphasis is on how to develop process measures and how to select, train, and use judges to code data. This chapter is based on my experience in doing process research and in reviewing manuscripts on process research for publication.

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• Meaning-making in psychotherapy after traumatic loss: therapists’ perspectives

  Counselling Psychology Quarterly · 2024-09-12 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  We interviewed 11 experienced therapists specializing in loss/trauma about their work with one client with whom they successfully facilitated meaning-making after a traumatic loss. Interviews, analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR), revealed that the traumatic loss had negatively impacted clients’ relationships, mental health, and beliefs/religion/spirituality; therapists utilized a range of interventions to facilitate meaning-making, including interventions to help clients experience/regulate emotion and interventions to gain insight; clients made meaning in diverse ways that could be broadly categorized under meaning-as-comprehensibility and meaning-as-significance; and clients experienced positive adjustment (in mental health, relationships, etc.) through the meaning-making work. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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• Finding meaning during COVID-19: the experiences of single millennial women

  Counselling Psychology Quarterly · 2024-11-20

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Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH037837

  NIH · $438k · 1992

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah Knox

  Marquette University

  84 shared

• Dennis M. Kivlighan

  49 shared

• Charles J. Gelso

  University of Maryland, College Park

  29 shared

• Shirley A. Hess

  28 shared

• B. J. Thompson

  24 shared

• Mary Ann Hoffman

  24 shared

• Patricia T. Spangler

  23 shared

• Karen M. O’Brien

  University of Maryland, College Park

  21 shared

Awards & honors

• Leona Tyler Award (Society of Counseling Psychology)
• Distinguished Psychologist Award (Division 29 of the America…
• Distinguished Research Career Award (Society for Psychothera…
• Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award (Section on Counselin…