Thursday 15 March 2018

Ta deuxième vie commence…..

I was idling through the airport bookshop yesterday on my way back from Paris, and came across a paperback by Raphäelle Giordano called "Ta deuxième vie commence quand tu comprends que tu n'en as qu'une" - or in English "Your second life begins when you understand that you don't have more than one".

The book is a self-help book, dressed up as a story about a middle aged Parisian woman who seems to have everything she should want, i.e. a son, happy marriage, job. One day she has a car accident, and in trying to get help meets a man who calls himself a "routinologist".  In talking to the man, she realises how in fact she is deeply unhappy, and over the next few months works with him to re-evaluate and change her life.

The interesting point from a psychological perspective is that the book details various strategies which people can use to take stock and change their lives, and these are detailed in an appendix. Given the authors background in coaching and training in areas such as NLP, the suggested methods are not that surprising.  For example, one suggestion is building an internal catalogue of positive images. This reminds me of a talk I heard by Richard Bentall many years ago, in which he talked about depressed clients needing to build new cognitive schemas to sit alongside and out compete the negative schemas which have built up during the person's life. In other words, gaining insight into the negative stuff may be useful, but alongside this there needs to be active strategies to promote and gain from positive experiences.

Interesting what you can come across browsing in the airport bookshop! Given that Giordano's book appeared to be number one on the list of best selling French short paperbacks, it also illustrates the probable dissatisfaction many people have with their current lives - despite appearing to have all that they want.





Thursday 13 July 2017

Exploring inner worlds: towards a cognitve science approach to psychotherapy

Just got back from a very exciting DCoP conference in Stratford. Had some great discussions with my colleague Prof. Arnaud Plagnol, about the book we are writing together, which will present a cognitive representational view of psychotherapy. This is an integrative framework which can unite lots of different therapeutic models, as well as lead to new ideas for research and improving therapeutic outcomes.

Friday 7 June 2013

Watch this space...

In my new role as programme manager for the professional doctorate in counselling psychology at UWE, I intend to be much more active on this blog.

Some thoughts I will be posting on in the near future:

1) What is the psychological view of transference?
2) Does client choice matter?

Based on some interesting papers I have been reading recently.

Announcing new programme manager and curriculum review for prof doc at UWE

I am very excited to be able to reveal that from August, 2013, I will be the new programme manager for the professional doctorate in Counselling Psychology at UWE.

We have lots of exciting plans for the professional doctorate in counselling psychology, here at the University of the West of England.

In particular, we intend to launch a revamped, full time, programme from 2014. This will allow students to complete the programme in 3 years (whereas at the moment it takes 5).  It will still be possible to study the programme part time, taking either 4 or 5 years for trainees that prefer to take a little longer.

We will also be refreshing the curriculum, looking at how we can use technology better to support student learning etc.

The philosophy will however remain the same - students will build on the solid cousnelling skills they acquired before coming on the programme.  During the three years they will learn to practice from a relational perspective, but will couple this with sound skills in cognitive beahvaioural therpay. Thus our intention is to produce counselling psychologists that are ready and able to take up their position within the profession, and that are highly attractive to potential employers.

Anyone that would like further information should feel free to contact me.

Tuesday 29 December 2009

This is a new blog, to reflect on issues in UK Counselling Psychology.