Towards networking in counselling: a follow-up study of Finnish school counselling

A follow-up study (1990-1997) and in-depth interviews on school counselling practices and problems in Finland showed that in the last 10 years the work of the school counsellor has extended and become more diversified. This article analyses this change in school counselling in terms of the problems and core tasks of counselling and the new challenges faced by Finnish counsellors, such as dismantling the traditional gender divisions in working life and counselling for immigrants. In addition, the article examines how school counsellors have attempted to solve the problems related to their work, for example, by establishing counselling networks inside and outside the school.     

Towards a social model approach to counselling disabled clients

The social model of disability has emerged over the past 30 years in Britain to challenge the dominant individual, particularly medical and tragedy, models. This social model is borne from the experiences of disabled people and essentially defines disability as the discrimination faced by people with impairments. This paper explores the possible conflicts between some counselling approaches that can individualise and personalise problems and disability as a political issue. Drawing on research with counsellors and disabled clients, we illustrate the social construction of disability as an individualised problem within the counselling process. Considering the implications for counselling practice, we argue for an approach to counselling which recognises the social model of disability as the basis for social change.     

Towards ethical decision-making in counselling research

This paper explores the process of ethical decision-making in counselling research and asks the question: after following ethical guidelines, reviewing ethical principles and consulting codes of practice, to what extent is our decision-making based on intuitive thinking? The paper begins by examining Kitchener's model of ethical justification and the ethical principles upon which it rests. Bond's approach to ethical problem-solving is also considered. The second part of the paper explores the sequential decision-making process suggested by Gellatt, upon which both the Kitchener and Bond models seem to rest, and compares this with Gellatt's later revision of his model. The process by which we arrive at an ethical decision is then explored in relation to these. The final part of the paper argues that we reach ethical decisions through intuition, informed by ethical principles, codes of practice and reference to the laws of society. In order to safeguard the well-being of our clients and/or research participants, we need to be aware of this and offer up our decision-making process to the scrutiny of peers and the public at large. Although much of the paper explores this process at a general level, research undertaken into children's perception of stress will be used as an example.     

African and Islamic philosophy: Expanding the horizons of philosophical counselling

Philosophical counselling has traditionally utilized a limited number of philosophical traditions: Existentialism, Stoicism, and the employment of Socratic dialogues being the most common ones. Focusing on a limited number of philosophical views does not exploit the potential therapeutic value of many other philosophical traditions, and may enhance dogmatism. In this paper we illustrate the need for a wider philosophical toolkit by showing the potential value of two rarely-employed philosophical traditions: African and Islamic philosophy. From the plethora of issues in these philosophical traditions, we highlight the relevance of African philosophy to conflicts between social duties and individual desires, and the relevance of Islamic philosophy to conflicts between faith and reason. We then emphasize the relevance of these philosophies in the current social and political situation in the Western world in general, and in Europe in particular.     

Towards a model of self-awareness development for counselling and psychotherapy training

Self-awareness has been considered to be a critical ingredient for effective counselling and psychotherapy. However, training models have failed to provide an integrated and explicit approach to self-awareness development. The authors therefore introduce and describe the integrated model of self-awareness development and discuss potential applications for counselling and psychotherapy training.     

Assessing the structure of learning outcomes from counselling using the SOLO taxonomy: an exploratory study

Thirty-five clients who had received counselling completed a letter to a friend describing in as much detail as possible what they had learned from counselling. The participants' written responses were analysed and classified using the Structure of Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy. The results suggested that an expanded SOLO offers a promising and exciting way to view the outcomes of counselling within a learning framework. If the SOLO taxonomy is found to be stable in subsequent research, and clients are easily able to be classified using the taxonomy, then this approach may have implications for the process of counselling. To maximise the learning outcomes, counsellors could use strategies and techniques to enhance their clients' learning.     

The persons‐in‐relation perspective: Towards a philosophy for counselling in society

This paper is the first in a planned series, which aims to articulate and synthesise the persons‐in‐relation perspective in counselling and psychotherapy, drawing together the contributions of the philosopher John Macmurray, the psychotherapist Ian Suttie and the psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn. The paper introduces the persons‐in‐relation perspective, derived from Macmurray's work. It outlines the historical and cultural context leading to the emergence of modernism, and the response of personalism. It summarises John Macmurray's life and philosophy, focusing on his account of knowledge, its relation to the senses and the emotions, and his view of persons, society and religion. The paper goes on to develop a hypothesis about the rise of counselling in Britain, linking it to the decline of religion, the conflict between individualism and collectivism, and the re‐emergence of the persons‐in‐relation perspective. It concludes by posing challenges for the person‐centred and psychodynamic orientations, and for counselling as a whole.     

Towards an integrated identity in counselling psychology: Graduate,professional and academic experiences

The paper is a reflective summary of my identity as a counselling psychologist. It discusses personal life, work and training experiences. The reason I would like to publish such a work is to encourage students in Greece, where the field of Counselling Psychology is less developed, to consider this kind of specialization, as well as to continuously enhance their professional identity, assimilating both practice and research opportunities, throughout their career paths. The paper focuses on three major influences in my development and training in the field: (a) graduate experiences as a doctoral student, writing a thesis on women's professional development, (b) work experiences in a career center of a large academic institution, and (c) academic and instructional experiences in a School of Psychology, where I teach and supervise research of both undergraduate and graduate students. The above influences delineate three separate, yet integrating identities: the identity of a feminist, the identity of a practitioner, and the identity of a researcher and instructor in the academia–that is, the identity of a scientist. My intention is to show how these three identities have been well integrated all these years, improving continuously my level of work in each and every dimension.     

Social machines: a philosophical engineering

In Weaving the Web (2000), Berners-Lee defines Social Machines as biotechnologically hybrid Web-processes on the basis of which, “high-level activities, which have occurred just within one human’s brain, will occur among even larger more interconnected groups of people acting as if the shared a larger intuitive brain” (201–202). The analysis and design of Social Machines has already started attracting considerable attention both within the industry and academia. Web science, however, is still missing a clear definition of what a Social Machine is, which has in turn resulted in several calls for a “philosophical engineering” (Halpin 2013; Hendler & Berners-Lee 2010); Halpin et al. 2010). This paper is a first attempt to respond to this call, by combining contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science with epistemology. The idea of philosophical engineering implies that a sufficiently good conception of Social Machines should be of both theoretical and practical advantage. To demonstrate how the present approach can satisfy both objectives it will be used in order to address one of Wikipedia’s (the most famous Social Machine to date) most worrying concerns—i.e., the current and ongoing decline in the number of its active contributors (Halfacker et al. 2012).     

Hypnosis as a counselling tool

The history of hypnosis is outlined, with particular reference to recent developments. The main current theories are expounded briefly, and applications in short-term therapy and counselling are discussed As therapists from a wide range of systems of psychotherapy and analysis are increasingly incorporating hypnosis into their practice, the hope is expressed that counsellors will take more advantage of training opportunities and extend the use of hypnosis in their own work.     

Adventure based counselling,individual counselling and object relations: a critical evaluation of a qualitative study

Adventure based counselling is a short-term experiential psychotherapeutic approach, which utilises adventurous activities and being in natural environmental in order to facilitate therapeutic change in clients. The present paper critically appraises the results of a qualitative study that investigated how clients with self-reported anxiety and depression experienced participating in an innovative counselling intervention with combined individual counselling with such an adventurous outdoor transaction. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, as described by Smith and Osborn (2008), was used in order record and analyse the experiences of four male and six female students who were treated at the Teesside's University Counselling Service. Interviewees perceived the counselling sessions as offering a safe therapeutic space within which they could unveil their anxieties and achieve inner healing, whereas the outdoor transaction as providing an experiential venue for achieving personal change. Interviewees felt that without the outdoor transaction the therapeutic significance of the counselling process would not have reached its full potential. Likewise, without the individual counselling, the outdoor transaction would just have an entertaining event and not a venue for personal change. These findings are discussed in relation to object relations theory.     

Replacing client-centred counselling with culture-centred counselling

Models of psychotherapies and counselling do not develop in a social vacuum. They arise out of and rest on several fundamental assumptions-social, linguistic and cultural-most which are understood and shared by the client group and the therapists andor counsellors. The extent to which there is a congruence of shared assumptions facilitates the process of counselling and/or therapy. It does not, however, guarantee its successful outcome. This paper examines the fundamental assumptions underlying client-centred counselling and argues that there is at present a lack of correspondence between the assumptions of the counsellors and those of their client groups-even within their own culture. But among the client groups comprising the ethnic minorities originating from the Indian subcontinent, there is a wide chasm. The clients do not understand or share the fundamental assumptions of their counsellors. As a result, client-centred counselling is irrelevant and does not serve the needs of the clients groups comprising the ethnic minorities. It is in urgent need of a paradigm shaft. It is argued that client-centred therapy needs to be replaced by culture-centred counselling, in which counsellors can be trained. The paper presents the main features of a model of counselling that is applicable not only to the white indigenous population in Britain but to the above ethnic minorities living in Britain.     

Non-directive counselling in a general practice

Many patients in general medical practice are not ill in the physical sense, but bring their unhappiness to the surgery. An experiment is described in which a counsellor was attached to a general practice in north London, to help to deal with problems of this kind.     

Toward a consensual taxonomy of emotions

ABSTRACT

In this article, I chart certain origins of the science of emotion back to the cognitive revolution. I then highlight new developments in the field – the influences of emotion upon cognition, the focus on over 20 emotions, the expanding emphasis on positive emotion, and an abiding interest in the functions emotions serve. I close by arguing for the need for the field to move toward a conceptual taxonomy of emotions, to move beyond decades of terminological debates about what emotions are to a convergent effort to understand what emotions do for people.