Category: Psychotherapy
An informal study of Psychotherapeutic orientations
I worked with Psychotherapeutic author Mick Cooper to do an informal study of psychotherapeutic orientations in the UK. Psychotherapy is complex. When someone decides that they would like / need some therapy, they may or may not have some ideas of the type of therapist they need. Some people may consider their particular known issue,…
Karen Horney’s theory of personality
The below is taken from Neurosis and Growth (Karen Horney, 1951), as well as summaries and commentaries from here and here and occassionaly my own reflections along the way. – Karen Horney was an amazing woman. She immensely respected Freud but challenged much of psychoanalytical orthodoxy. She provided a theoretical framework of mental illness that…
Guide to counselling skills
Counselling skills are a cluster of learned and practised abilities that therapists use with clients to achieve the goals of therapy. Developing these skills involves a combination of knowledge, practice, reflection and feedback. Listening Listening is a core counselling skill – it’s also frustratingly hard. Growing up we’re told to control the narrative and dominate…
The regulation of ego states within ourselves
“Everyone carries their parents inside…also a little boy/girl” Eric Berne Ego states – as conceptualised by Eric Berne – are psychological realities or modes of being that emerge within us, depending on the situation and our own tendencies. In this article, I will discuss intrapsychic processes. For a more detailed overview of ego estates and…
The Good Life (according to Carl Rogers)
Ask people what they think makes for a good life and you will find many different answers. Some people will relate to achievements, possessions and other goal-led end-states. Others may become more philosophical: “to be happy”, “to be free of worries”. Very rarely, if ever, the good life will be what it’s happening right now. …
The seven stages of the counselling process according to Rogers
It did not appeal to me to review work we have done in the past. I decided rather to devote a year (…) to understand the process by which personality changes (…) but as the next year approached I realised the ideas I had formed were still unclear, tentative, hardly in the shape of a…
