I read with interest the article in the April 2014 edition of Therapy Today about bullying in the workplace and specifically when the bully is another therapist. The article by Dr Werner Kierski and Jessica Johns-Green raised a number of important issues which resonated with my own experiences undergoing psychotherapeutic training. The authors refer to a […]
Do unpaid placements abuse trainee psychotherapists? Read More »
I spent a day in the garden today and it was a nice escape from the demands of academic books. Working in the garden is not compulsory, of course, in order to get away from the intellectual realm. The earth breath technique can be done anywhere and can be a vital part of integrative psychotherapeutic
Restoring the magnestism of the body Read More »
I came across 3-s therapy or Spiritual Self-Schema in my recent reading. This is a manual based therapy developed by Avants and Margolin. The chief objective of the therapy is to enable clients to develop, build upon and habitually activate a cognitive schema, which is what is referred to as the Spiritual self-schema. See the step by step guide
Recovery from addiction (with a spiritual twist) Read More »
I recently watched the excellent BBC Horizon documentary on decision making. The programme featured the very interesting work of Professor Daniel Kahneman (pictured, left) from Princeton University and his late colleague Amos Tversky. They had demonstrated for over 30 years several replicable ways in which human judgements and decisions differ from rational choice theory. Cognitive and behavioural approaches tend
We feel the pain of a loss much more than we feel the pleasure of a gain Read More »
I am continuing with my read of Rowan’s very interesting 2010 book Personification: Using the Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy and Counselling. I was particularly impressed with the piece about reification. Reification is that process by which we take a theoretical concept and turn it into a real thing. For instance, Rowan mentions the example of Kohut
Festival of reification Read More »
Emerging from the Family Cocoon: The Wonder of Individuation Having gained some insight into how growing up in your family has shaped you, are you now ready to look deeper within? Do you wish to discover your hidden potential and qualities? Would you like to make sense of your experience using creative imagination, storytelling, poetry and making
Emerging from the Family Cocoon: The Wonder of Individuation Read More »
It is quite common to hear counsellors and psychotherapists say to themselves, or in group supervision, that they were only listening to the client and that there was a perceived absence of creative intervention in the therapy on their part. When I feel like this I must remember what Clarkson said about the therapeutic relationship.
I was only listening Read More »
On Tuesday I interviewed Dr John Rowan about integrative psychotherapy practice. In the interview John tells me about his ideas on psycho spiritual development, levels of consciousness and his views on personification. Well known in the psychotherapy environment for his work on Subpersonalities, his other books are Ordinary Ecstasy, Healing the Male Psyche (Therapy as initiation)
Dr John Rowan chats to Noel Bell about integrative psychotherapy practice Read More »
The results of a recent study into the effectiveness of talking therapies and CBT as a treatment programme for schizophrenia show its usefulness is so minimal that it’s continued recommendation cannot be justified. Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire led by Prof Keith Laws found that CBT only had a “small therapeutic effect” on schizophrenic symptoms. For
CBT of little use in the treatment of schizophrenia Read More »
I have always been intrigued by what makes people commit murderous acts of rage. This is not a morbid reflection on man’s inhumanity to man, on my part, or indeed an attempt by me to gain vicarious pleasure from learning of the gory details of forensic events. Rather, it is my way of exploring and