What do patients prefer in their psychotherapy? Do laypersons and mental health professionals (as patients) want the same, or different, things? The authors systematically examined patients' psychotherapy preferences and quantitatively compared two samples of laypersons (N ϭ 228, 1,305) with one sample of mental health professionals (N ϭ 615) on the four dimensions of the Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preferences: Therapist Directiveness Versus Client Directiveness, Emotional Intensity Versus Emotional Reserve, Past Orientation Versus Present Orientation, and Warm Support Versus Focused Challenge. On average, laypersons wanted therapist directiveness and emotional intensity. Robust differences were found between laypersons' and professionals' preferences on these two dimensions: Mental health professionals wanted less therapist directiveness than did laypersons (gs ϭ 0.92 and 1.43 between groups) and more emotional intensity (gs ϭ 0.49 and 1.33). Women also wanted more warm support than men (gs ϭ 0.40 and 0.57). These findings suggest that psychotherapists should be mindful of their own treatment preferences and ensure that these are not inappropriately generalized to patients. Clinical Impact StatementQuestion: What do laypeople prefer in psychotherapy, and do mental health professionals want the same in their own therapy? Findings: Our results demonstrate huge variations in therapy preferences, but, in general, laypersons prefer more direction and less emotional intensity than their psychotherapists. Meaning: Mental health professionals should consider assessing their patients' activity preferences, accommodating them when clinically and ethically feasible, and guarding against projecting their own desires onto their patients. Next Steps: Future practice and research will increasingly ask whose preferences prevail and under which circumstances should therapists' preferences supersede those of their patients.

Background The Relational Depth Frequency Scale (RDFS) assesses moments of profound connection in psychotherapy, associated with therapeutic benefit. To date, the RDFS has not been tested for its retest reliability, divergent and criterion validity, and measurement invariance, nor has it been tested in stratified samples of psychotherapy patients. Methods Two stratified online samples of United Kingdom (n = 514) and United States (n = 402) psychotherapy patients filled out the RDFS, the Brief Social Desirability Scale (BSDS); and the Satisfaction with Therapy and Therapist Scale‐revised (STTS‐R). Two subsamples of patients (United Kingdom: n = 50 and United States: n = 203) filled out the RDFS again after 1 month. Results Reliability for the six‐item RDFS were excellent in United Kingdom and United States samples (Cronbach's α = 0.91 and 0.92; retest r = 0.73 and r = 0.76). Divergent (r = 0.10 and r = 0.12) and criterion validity (r = 0.69; and r = 0.70) were good. Full scalar invariance was established across countries, genders, and time. Conclusion This contributes important evidence to the validity of the RDFS. Future research should assess predictive validity against psychotherapy outcomes and replicate these analyses in diverse samples.