Michael’s Psychotherapy CPD Blog

Online CPD blog  for counsellors and psychotherapists who want to develop their integrative, embodied, relational understanding and deepen their practice.

Introductory Notes by Michael Soth: ‘Embodied Intersubjectivity in the Clinic’ with Shaun Gallagher

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 [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:20+00:00April 1st, 2015|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

The Therapist’s Habitual Position

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? [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:21+00:00February 24th, 2015|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

The Vicissitudes of Therapeutic Assessment

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 [...]

By |2017-03-30T12:31:11+00:00February 5th, 2015|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

The Therapist’s Conflict – a Precious Ingredient in the Therapeutic Encounter

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 [...]

By |2019-01-13T21:53:08+00:00February 3rd, 2015|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

Relational Psychotherapy – Praises and Pitfalls

The Psychotherapy Excellence webcast series on the topic 'Relational Psychotherapy - Praises and Pitfalls' is now complete. I contributed an interview on: The embodied phenomenology of enactment It is in the area of subliminal, non-verbal and pre-verbal communications between client and therapist that enactments incubate, long before they become noticeable, articulated and problematic. Implicit relational [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:24+00:00November 14th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

How does psychotherapy work? – laying the groundwork in 100 daily tweets!

Following on from Interview 2 with Tom Warnecke for Psychotherapy Excellence, as it was fresh on my mind, I have written a sequence of 100 bullet points on the question "How does psychotherapy work?" - follow me on Twitter (@INTEGRA_CPD) to catch the whole series, one every day ... The bullet points are not yet [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:25+00:00October 14th, 2014|CPD Tutorials|0 Comments

Mindfulness – Mindlessness – Bodymind Fullness

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. [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:29+00:00September 28th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

12 tweet summary: Mindfulness – Mindlessness – Bodymind Fullness

Mindfulness is in fashion – in therapy, business, health. But its promise is already flagging, people are becoming disenchanted with it. It’s not surprising that mindfulness has turned into another fad & can’t possibly live up to people’s desperate expectations & idealisations. Westerners are in grave danger of misreading the Eastern teachings on mindfulness through [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:28+00:00September 28th, 2014|CPD Tutorials|0 Comments

Defining the working alliance – 1

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 [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:30+00:00September 16th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

Defining the working alliance – 2

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 [...]

By |2014-09-18T00:40:49+00:00September 15th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

Supershrinks – What’s the secret of their success?

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 [...]

By |2017-04-01T14:45:49+00:00September 14th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

The dilemmas which the client’s ‘character’ creates for the therapist

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 [...]

By |2017-04-01T14:46:58+00:00September 11th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

What’s not quite right about this cartoon? (Id-Ego-Superego/child-adult-parent)

A student submitted this cartoon - here is my response: Nice graphic - did you draw it, or is it copied from somewhere? Some suggestions for clarification: I think the face of the Id looks more like a cynical, demanding parent than a demanding, passionate or even greedy child. The poor Ego looks adequately squeezed [...]

By |2017-05-24T15:58:35+00:00September 11th, 2014|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

1. Continuing Development in an ‘impossible profession’?

The more I am developing, the more impossible it gets? When counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and associated disciplines are called 'impossible professions', this is often understood as a tongue-in-cheek conversational quip, a collective exclamation of mock exasperation: "What can you do? It's impossible!" - and then we continue as before. But I have come to think [...]

By |2017-04-13T05:26:10+00:00June 6th, 2013|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments

2. In an impossible profession, the therapist NEEDS to fail

In an impossible profession, the therapist needs to fail In the last entry, I suggested that psychotherapy's depth, impact and effectiveness would increase dramatically, if we took the notion of the 'impossible profession' not as a quip, but as an essential reality - as the paradoxical foundation of our work. Today - without yet delving [...]

By |2017-03-07T19:54:45+00:00June 27th, 2012|Michael's Psychotherapy CPD Blog|0 Comments