Dr. Smoliak is a clinical/counselling psychologist and registered marriage and family therapist, whose specific research interests include couples therapy, parent-child interaction and relationships, therapy process, counsellor education and training, therapist's positioning, and therapeutic alli...
Dr. Smoliak is a clinical/counselling psychologist and registered marriage and family therapist, whose specific research interests include couples therapy, parent-child interaction and relationships, therapy process, counsellor education and training, therapist's positioning, and therapeutic alliance. She is particularly interested in examining postmodern, psychodynamic, process-experiential, and systemic therapies and supervision practices.
She is also interested in the topics of professional competency and counsellor training and education. She examines how theory influences the analysis and interpretation of research results and intends to focus her research career in the next several years on the contribution of relationships and communication between clients and psychotherapists outcomes. From the common-sense assumption that change in counselling owes something to the conversational interactions of clients and counsellors, she examined these interactions microdynamically.
Her research program has centred on generating evidence-based guidelines for practitioners and educators wishing to enhance the quality of therapeutic and mental health service provision to the public. She uses primarily qualitative (or mixed) methods to examine what occurs in interactions between psychotherapists and their clients.