Michael’s Psychotherapy CPD Blog

Preparations for the Conference In a conference dedicated to conceptual clarification with the help of a philosopher, I thought we better make sure that we’ve got our terms straight, and that we all know what we’re talking about. Therefore, in the build-up to the conference, I wanted to prepare the [...]

Questions inherent in our theme ‘Embodied Intersubjectivity’ What are our ideas/concepts of ‘mind’ and how two ‘minds’ understand each other and relate? What notion of ‘mind’ is implicit in our practice and in our way of being and thinking? What role does our bodily experience play in our ‘mind’ process? What are our [...]

Morit Heitzler will soon be running a workshop in Oxford on the topic of "The therapist's habitual position". Traditionally, when we describe a therapist's way of working, we think about theory and technique: what kind of concepts, models and theoretical framework underpins the approach? and what kind of interventions and therapeutic responses flow from this? [...]

The following piece was written in preparation for a training day on “First Sessions and Initial Assessments and Dilemmas”. The tension between (inter)subjective and objective aspects of the assessment encounter Whether it is an assessment at school, university or at work, or by a medical specialist or other expert, one question - running alongside the [...]

CPD Workshop: "How to work when therapy isn't working?" ...when the client’s conflict becomes the therapist’s conflict Traditional academic teaching of counselling and psychotherapy assumes that our discipline is similar to any other subject - whether we are learning history or engineering or psychology, there is a body of knowledge and a range of models [...]

Applying Terentius’ (180 BC) 'Let nothing human be alien to me!' to the therapeutic space, I can ask myself: how much of human diversity does my consulting room invite, exclude or ignore? How much is structured out by default? What are the assumptions I take for granted – about myself, about therapy, about the client, [...]

Interested in this proposal for an experiential workshop on 'mindfulness'? Mindfulness is all the rage and in fashion everywhere – in therapy, in business, in health. It’s supposed to cure all ills, increase performance, improve your relationships, help you make money, relieve all sorts of pain from physical to mental, and establish a peaceful society. [...]

Clarkson, P. (1995) The Therapeutic Relationship. Whurr The working alliance is the part of client- psychotherapist relationship that enables the client and therapist to work together even when the patient client experiences some desires to the contrary. (Clarkson 1994 p. 31) The working alliance or psychotherapeutic alliance is probably first encountered as a concept in [...]

Ralph R Greenson (1967) Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis Greenson defined the working alliance as: “the relatively non-and neurotic, rational, and realistic attitudes of the patient towards the analyst … It is this part of the patient-analyst relationship that enables the patient to identify with the analyst’s point of view and to work with the [...]

This 2008 paper "Supershrinks - What's the secret of their success?" by Scott Miller, Mark Hubble, and Barry Duncan is one of the inspiration for this enquiry. They claim that therapists DO over-estimate their effectiveness and the working alliance. It's a great read (that does not mean I agree with everything they say, but they [...]

Some key points of the recently published transcript: Different types of embodiment work Attending to the body to make therapy more impactful, we notice that rather than us impacting the client, the client’s character impacts on us. By opening to non-verbal, subliminal bodymind communications, therapists become more vulnerable to the impact of here & now [...]

You are bound to fail as a facilitator if you get trapped in the client's character This is Part 1 of an edited transcript of a teaching talk, given in June 2014 to a training group of facilitators, with a special emphasis on the bodymind connection and embodiment. The main point of this talk is [...]

You are bound to fail as a facilitator if you get trapped in the client's character This is Part 2 of an edited transcript of a teaching talk, given in June 2014 to a training group of facilitators, with a special emphasis on the bodymind connection and embodiment. The main point of this talk is [...]

You are bound to fail as a facilitator if you get trapped in the client's character This is Part 3 of an edited transcript of a teaching talk, given in June 2014 to a training group of facilitators, with a special emphasis on the bodymind connection and embodiment. The main point of this talk is [...]