On Becoming a Counselling Psychologist: Making Sense of Presence

This reflective essay offers a personal account of my experience during my counselling psychology training. Research highlights that the person of the therapist contributes to clients’ improvement beyond the intervention, advocating the importance of personal development beyond a competency-based model. Consonantly, counselling psychology appreciates how practitioners bring their “self” to the therapeutic relationship, thus valuing their training, wider knowledge, and lived experiences. Accordingly, I will explore significant events that illuminate the personal dimension of my professional practice while also considering the wider empirical knowledge. Furthermore, as the beginning of my training has focused on the person-centered/experiential approach, I will conceptualize my experience within the framework posited by Rogers. Specifically, I will begin by reflecting on the theme of power to expose how personal issues might affect my development as a trainee. Second, I will illustrate how engaging with feedback has brought to awareness aspects of my “self” that relate to the theme of acceptance. Third, I will consider personal strengths that have the potential to enrich my practice and are encapsulated by the theme of lightness. Last, I will suggest the theme of presence as my attempt to make sense of challenges and limitations that I have faced during my training. By presenting these themes, I endeavor to offer a picture of how I have grown into a new place in my development as trainee counselling psychologist.

Professional Conduct and Handling Misconduct in Psychotherapy: Ethical Practice between Boundaries, Relationships, and Reality

The special nature of the professional relationship in psychotherapy requires a code of conduct that protects the patient, but also allows therapeutic flexibility. However, the limits of professional conduct are transgressed when a psychotherapist goes beyond his or her professional boundaries to satisfy his or her own needs. The implications of misconduct are considered to be particularly severe in psychotherapy. Misconduct has various faces and facets. Sexual misconduct is the most drastic form of boundary violation; however, this should not detract attention from other forms of misconduct, especially because they often precede the more severe boundary violations. Any form of misconduct is profoundly connected with the person of the therapist. Nevertheless, research often addresses the question of what professional misconduct is, rather than how ethical professional conduct can be facilitated. This chapter aims to give an overview of the current literature to (1) define professional conduct and outline ethical reasoning, (2) describe different forms of misconduct, (3) discuss options for prevention and intervention, and (4) discuss options for improving training of future psychotherapists.

La persona del terapeuta: Validación española del Cuestionario de Evaluación del Estilo Personal del Terapeuta (EPT-C)

The person of the therapist: Spanish validation of the Personal Style of the Therapist Questionnaire (PST-Q). The Personal Style of the Therapist Questionnaire (PST-Q) is an instrument with more than 20 years of theoretical and empirical developments at the international scenario, especially in Latin America. The main goal of the study was to provide preliminary evidence on its psychometric properties and factorial structure in a sample of Spanish licensed clinical psychologists (N = 350). 7 confirmatory factor analysis were performed to found a 20-item and 5-factor solution that had the best fit indices and internal consistency values. The original abbreviated model of the PST-Q was partially confirmed, since item 28 had to be eliminated because it had a factor weight less than .30. The alpha values were slightly lower than the original, but equivalent to those of the Portuguese validation. The implications of the findings for training and research in psychotherapy and clinical psychology are discussed.Keywords: Personal style of the therapist; PST-Q; practice-oriented research; clinical psychology; psychotherapy. Resumen: El Cuestionario de Evaluación del Estilo Personal del Terapeuta (EPT-C) es un instrumento con más de 20 años de desarrollos teóricos y empíricos a nivel internacional, especialmente en Latinoamérica. El objetivo del estudio consistió en proporcionar evidencia preliminar sobre sus propiedades psicométricas y estructura factorial en una muestra de psicólogos clínicos españoles debidamente acreditados (N = 350). Se realizaron 7 análisis factoriales confirmatorios hasta dar con una solución de 5 factores y 20 ítems que resultó ser la que presentó los mejores índices de ajuste y de consistencia interna. Se confirmó parcialmente el modelo abreviado original del EPT-C, ya que tuvo que eliminarse el ítem 28 por presentar una carga factorial inferior a .30. Los valores alfa fueron ligeramente inferiores al original, pero equivalentes a los de la validación portuguesa. Se discuten las implicaciones de los hallazgos para la formación e investigación en psicoterapia y psicología clínica. Palabras clave: Estilo personal del terapeuta; EPT-C; investigación orientada por la práctica; psicología clínica; psicoterapia.

La persona del terapeuta: Validación española del Cuestionario de Evaluación del Estilo Personal del Terapeuta (EPT-C) [The person of the therapist: Spanish validation of the Personal Style of the Therapist Questionnaire (PST-Q)]

The Personal Style of the Therapist Questionnaire (PST-Q) is an instrument with more than 20 years of theoretical and empirical developments at the international scenario, especially in Latin America. The main goal of the study was to provide preliminary evidence on its psychometric properties and factorial structure in a sample of Spanish licensed clinical psychologists (N = 350). 7 confirmatory factor analysis were performed to found a 20-item and 5-factor solution that had the best fit indices and internal consistency values. The original abbreviated model of the PST-Q was partially confirmed, since item 28 had to be eliminated because it had a factor weight less than .30. The alpha values were slightly lower than the original, but equivalent to those of the Portuguese validation. The implications of the findings for training and research in Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology are discussed.

Keeping Meditation Religious and Psychotherapy Secular

This chapter examines psychotherapists personalizing religion approaches to Buddhist teachings and practices. Here clinicians can be dramatically influenced by Buddhist teachings, but, intent on maintaining a clear differentiation between Buddhist and psychotherapeutic practice, are loath to “mix” the two. Deep believing Buddhist clinicians betray no sign of Buddhist influence in actual therapy sessions eschewing embodied practices or explicit discussion of Buddhist concepts. They instead hold their Buddhist identities silently internal within “the person of the therapist,” thus “personalized.” The work of one of the most famous therapists to investigate Buddhist traditions, Erich Fromm, is detailed. Fromm’s innovative reconstructions of the terms “religion” and “secular” remain highly influential today. The chapter then describes contemporary therapists who keep their therapy offices clear of visible signs of Buddhist practice during their work day while, in the evenings, publicly speak on “Zen psychoanalysis” or even lead Buddhist communities. These therapists view their work to be fundamentally Buddhist in nature and their patients will sometimes seek them out precisely for their Buddhist association. Personalizing religion approaches thus blur boundaries between the religious and not-religious based on distinctions between the private and the public, the personal and the professional.