Road to hell
Things did not start well. At primary school I was described as a ‘slow coach’ and bedevilled by mistakes in my written work (only labelled as dyslexia many years later). However, I did well in the 11+ exam and got into the local grammar...
therapy
For my third-year placement as a trainee clinical psychologist, I wanted to do something different. I’d begun to find working in a clinic setting a bit repetitive, and the potential impact of this work felt limited. I had also begun to feel that while individual therapy might...
Having seen you talk about your work, I’m intrigued by the way you do psychology. Has it changed over the years?
The way I ‘do’ psychology, and what I think I mean by that, has changed considerably over the years
Before my training, and during it,...
Gloria Szymanski was a 31-year old, divorced and single mother when she allowed herself to be filmed in therapy with Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls and Albert Ellis in 1964. She had been recruited by her own therapist, Everett Shostrum, and told that the videos would be seen by...
The programme was billed as a chance for couples to ‘lay bare their most intimate secrets to the sex therapists in a specially constructed clinic, as they battle to get their relationships back on track.’ We asked Dr...
In recent months, I have come to realise some of the unrealistic expectations that therapists can have of their clients. I have witnessed some practitioners discharging patients because their client, who is severely depressed, has not completed their weekly mood diary. Not...
In a nutshell, what is Emotion-Focused Therapy?
It's an exploratory process which views the empathic relationship and, more specifically, empathic attunement to affect, as being most important. People experience painful emotions and these are seen as...
One of the first therapists who practised single-session therapy (SST) was Sigmund Freud. It is reported that the pioneer of long-term psychoanalysis carried out two well-known single-session treatments with Aurelia Öhm-Kronich (“Katharina”) in 1893 (Freud & Breuer, 1895...
After reading Terry Birchmore’s letter (July 2018) in reply to the question presented by Hugo Maximillian...
I am an assistant psychologist working for an organisation that specialises in the support of families with children who have experienced developmental trauma and attachment difficulties. Since taking this role, my professional ability has made great developments. However, I...