Counselling and the grocer's shop on campus

This personal view describes the alarming rise in clients which counsellors in higher education have experienced in recent years. Attention is drawn to the damaging effects on institutions which have resulted from the present government's policies and its consumerist ideology. The demoralisation of staff has increased the vulnerability of students who fall victim to the competitive ethos or lose confidence in their own subjective reality. Counselling services are monasteries in a dark age and are now a prey to misguided reformers who seek to protect them by infiltrating the very ideology from which clients are seeking refuge.