What is Counselling and Psychotherapy?

209 Pages·2010·3.153 MB·English

by  Norman Claringbull

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WHAT IS COUNSELLING
& PSYCHOTHERAPY?
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Other books in this series 2
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Reflective Practice in Counselling and
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Psychotherapy by Sofie Bager-Charleson ISBN 978 1 84445 360 3
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Creating the Therapeutic Relationship in 6
Counselling and Psychotherapy by Judith Green ISBN 978 1 84445 463 1 7
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Counselling and Psychotherapy in Organisational
Settings by Ruth Roberts and Judy Moore ISBN 978 1 84445 614 7 9
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To order, please contact our distributor: BEBC Distribution, Albion Close, 3
Parkstone, Poole, BH12 3LL. Telephone [phone], 4
email: [email protected]. You can also find more 5
information on each of these titles and our other learning resources at 6
www.learningmatters.co.uk 71
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WHAT IS COUNSELLING
& PSYCHOTHERAPY?
Norman Claringbull

Series editor: Norman Claringbull
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First published in 2010 by Learning Matters Ltd 3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in 4
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, 5
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior
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permission in writing from Learning Matters.
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© Norman Claringbull 2010
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. 9
ISBN: 978 1 84445 361 0 20
The right of Norman Claringbull to be identified as the Author of this 1
Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs 2
and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover design by Code 5 Design Associates
Project management by Diana Chambers 4
Typeset by Kelly Winter 5
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
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Learning Matters Ltd
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Exeter EX1 1NX 8
Tel: [phone]
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[email protected]
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
Part 1 Where has counselling & psychotherapy come from? 1
Chapter 1 Counselling & psychotherapy – the
opening story 3
Part 2 What do therapists do? 27
Introduction 28
Chapter 2 Repairing people – the tales begin 33
Chapter 3 The psychodynamic story 45
Chapter 4 The cognitive-behavioural story 65
Chapter 5 The humanistic story 86
Chapter 6 Pers onality and therapy – today’s story 105
Part 3 Where do therapists work? 119
Introduction 120
Chapter 7 Working in the commercial sector 123
Chapter 8 Working in the educational sector 137
Chapter 9 Working in the National Health Service 149
Part 4 Where is counselling & psychotherapy going? 165
Chapter 10 Counselling & psychotherapy – the next story 167
References 188
Index 197
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Preface and Acknowledgements
It is an exciting time to be a counsellor. It is a great time to be a psycho-
therapist. Times they are a-changing and never more so than in the talking
therapies. Counselling and psychotherapy in the UK are at a crossroads in
terms of their professional and academic development. Nowhere is this
more evident than in the intense debate that is taking place about the
possible futures of all the ‘talking therapies’. No one attending counselling
or psychotherapy seminars or conferences, reading professional journals,
or simply talking to therapist colleagues, can fail to be aware of the passion-
ately advanced arguments and counter-arguments. Much of the debate is
centred on therapist regulation and its likely ongoing impact on
practitioner education and professional practice. It feels like the end of
an era. Counselling and psychotherapy’s ‘greats’ are being ruthlessly
reappraised and its long-accepted orthodoxies are being irreverently
challenged. The old certainties of the therapeutic craft are fading and
radical changes in therapist training and practice seem inevitable. All of us
who are in any way involved in the talking therapies are now being
compelled to take a fresh look at our calling and at ourselves. In 1966,
Robert Kennedy famously (and erroneously) claimed that a Chinese curse
condemns enemies to ‘liv e in interesting times’. It seems more likely that,
for all psychological therapists, from trainees to advanced practitioners, our
own ‘interesting times’ could prove to be a blessing rather than a curse if
we use them to properly shape our professional tomorrow.
So, anyone concerned with the talking therapies, at any level, will
inevitably be affected by these developments and might even want to
contribute towards them. This is especially so in the case of the rapidly
emerging, new genre of graduate and postgraduate trainees and practi-
tioners who will be at the forefront as personal therapy practice increasingly
evolves into being a mainly university-educated profession. It will help the
therapy profession’s ‘new thinkers’ to better consider their future if they
first critically and reflectively examine their ideas about counselling and
psychotherapy’s past (its history). They will then be better placed to examine
what counselling and psychotherapy is currently about (its present), and
then they can productively explore how counselling and psychotherapy
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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
might evolve (its future). Put simply, the overall question is: Therapy – 1
what’s the story there then? 2
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The story of the personal therapies is, of course, just that. It is a story; it is 4
at best an approximation; it is not a matter of absolute fact. All tales are 5
inevitably dependent on the partialities of their tellers and the preferences 61
of their listeners. Similarly, therapy’s tales are also based on an ever-varying 7
selection of interpreted personal, social and academic histories. Like the 8
process of personal therapy itself, counselling and psychotherapy’s various 9
stories depend on who is doing the telling. Just as therapists try to interpret 101
their clients’ stories and make guesses about their future needs, so too must 2
therapists interpret their own stories about the therapeutic profession and 3
make some guesses about its future directions. Sensible practitioners will 4
evaluate the tales told in this book in the same way, it is hoped, that they 5
evaluate the tales told to them by their trainers, their teachers and their 6
clients. That is to say, to value these stories as essentially being attempts to 7
be truthful but always open to critical questioning. At the end of the day, 8
the best tales that therapists can tell are their own and it might be that some 9
of their stories are more credible than others. The trick is to find out which 20
is which. That is what this book is all about. 1
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FOUR CORE QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT 4
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1. Where have counselling and psychotherapy come from? 6
2. What do therapists do? 7
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3. Where do therapists work?
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4. Where are counselling and psychotherapy going?
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4
With thanks to Di Page, Luke Block, Lauren Simpson and all their colleagues 5
at Learning Matters for all their help, advice and encouragement. 6
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Thanks also to Paula Biles-Garvey, Tina Graham, Barbara Allen and Alex
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Bossman for all their contributions to Practitioner Reflections.
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part 1
WHERE HAS COUNSELLING
& PSYCHOTHERAPY
COME FROM?