Universities are not a good place for psychotherapy and counselling training |
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Authors: | Ian Parker |
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Affiliation: | Discourse Unit, The Manchester Metropolitan University, Elizabeth Gaskell Campus, Hathersage Road, Manchester, M13 OJA, UK, E-mail: I.A.Parker@mmu.ac.uk |
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Abstract: | This paper outlines eight aspects of institutional practice in university teaching that are at odds with the ethos of therapy: the linearity of university training has consequences for conceptual and cultural issues that may be antithetical to genuine therapeutic practice; certain notions about what reality is and what counts as truth may be reinforced by university trainings; academic knowledge in universities is standardized so as to sabotage therapeutic work; the university privileges a cognitive account; the university trains therapists in ways that are antithetical to the ethos of therapy; universities keep alive hierarchies that sit uneasily with the project of therapy; university training encourages the therapist to develop an identity that is anathema to many traditions in therapy; and compartmentalization of ethics in university-based trainings would run against the ethics of therapy. |
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Keywords: | psychotherapy counselling training universities |
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