Saturday December 4th. Picture the scene: I was travelling by rail from Southampton to the ‘Future of Psychotherapy’ meeting in London – with a background context of recent train disasters. Further – there had been an announcement just a day or two before that one of the trackside signals just outside Southampton Central was in the top ten of signals most often passed at danger

For this session of the Diploma in Person-Centered Supervision, we came up with the scenario of a physically self-injuring client and identified at least three possible client ‘selves’ (or ‘personal constructs’ or ‘configurations’)

I have selected and typed-up a few extracts from a counselling session conducted on Thursday 7th June 2001 in the belief that exploring issues arising from it might have value in demonstrating and illustrating my understanding of elements of client-centered philosophy and beliefs, core conditions, personality theory and therapeutic process.

I am aware that in ‘putting my practice out into the open’ like this I become open to negative and positive criticism, both of which I have, at long last, learned to welcome. For many years reluctant to ‘stage demonstration sessions’ – in the belief that modelling goes against authentic self-development. I am now offering public scrutiny of my work, my way of being with clients. I now know that the less defensive I can be about my practice – no matter how hard that may be at times – the more I can learn and become the best therapist that I am able to become.

There are certain personal qualities which should be present if the individual is to develop into a good counselor, but there is no reason to believe that these are any more rare than the qualities which would be necessary for a good artist or a first-class aviation pilot. This is definitely true if we are talking of the client-centered type of counselling

The idea of “HOW DO YOU DO”—a snappy title, some might say, came to me with reference to both “ demarcation disputes” and the process of student-centered learning of a person-centered approach (PCA) to counselling…

‘Demarcation disputes’ for me was around differentiation – the efforts of many to distinguish between counselling and psychotherapy, between person-centered and other approaches to counselling. Or psychotherapy. Or… Then, too, there have been the attempts to differentiatebetween counselling and counselling skills…

My year by year experience is of trainees being skeptical when I speak of there being no such thing as the “sub-conscious”. I determined to undertake a little further research in an attempt to clarify—regrettably in some ways, this has resulted in a paper/lecture rather than an experiential, student-centered exercise.

At our joint PCT Scotland/BAPCA 1999 Forum in Glasgow there was an ongoing community of anywhere between around fifty and in excess of two hundred people. There were workshops on offer, there were speeches. There was socializing, isolation, eating and drinking and sleeping (a little!) and…here was angst, anger, joy, boredom…There were feelings of belonging, feelings of alienation…There was sharing, there was silence (shared or disconnected)