Psychoanalytic Counselling (Wiley Series in Psychotherapy & Counselling) Book

This book translates psychoanalytic ideas for counsellors and researchers who wish to learn about psychoanalytic counselling and use it in their work. It is an introductory text intended for an audience of experienced masters and doctoral level counsellors, graduate students in training and researchers. The authors, therefore, attempt to systematically formulate and present a theory of psychoanalytic counselling such that the applications of central concepts and processes to counselling and research situations are made clear. A major intent which has guided their writing is that of illustrating how the counsellor, acting as a scientist/practitioner, may use psychoanalytic theory as a schema for understanding the client's interview behaviour, as a plan for intervening in the flow of that behaviour, and as a means of assessing the efficacy of those interventions. In the book, the authors stress the importance of the counsellor acting as a scientist/practitioner as he or she goes about helping the client. By this they mean that it is both possible and desirable for the counsellor to take up a scientific attitude in the process of helping the client. This attitude is manifested in the counsellor's use and testing of theoretically derived formulations that are explicitly based on careful observation of client behaviour. The scientist/practitioner approach is thus characterized by the counsellor's willingness to use observation as the basis of his or her understanding and, thereby, to regard any formulation of the client's behaviour as open to refutation by additional observations. Behaving as a scientist/practitioner is an important ethical and professional responsibility which enables the counsellor to contribute to knowledge of the counselling process as well as help the client.Read More