Psychologists and psychiatrists came together on 15 December to share evidence with the House of Lords Covid-19 Select Committee on the long-term impacts of our use of technology during the pandemic on our mental wellbeing. The peers also touched on the use of technology in...
therapy
It was a day I won’t forget in a hurry.
I was an inpatient on an acute psychiatric ward, sectioned under the Mental Health Act. I was meant to be in a place of safety. But perched on the end of my unmade bed, with tears rolling down my face, I felt so alone. I wanted to...
In the October issue, Jonathon Dawson asked how to address racism in therapy. Dawson mentioned that a key aim of therapy settings is to build therapeutic alliance, yet his...
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...
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...