Chris Mitchell

Counselling and psychotherapy

I will be describing a range of issues relating to counselling and psychotherapy. This will include a variety of models, such as (but not limited to) the Person Centred Approach, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, attachment-based therapy, Gestalt therapy, Transactional Analysis and the Existential approach. In unpacking these models, we will look at some specific techniques in counselling, such as using two chairs, reparenting and mindfulness. I will also cover a range of things that will come up in counselling, whatever approach is being used. These will include the importance of the counsellor-client relationship, self-care and the extent to which we project thoughts and emotions onto others (what psychoanalysts might refer to as transference). Lastly, we will look at the empirical evidence in support of the use of counselling in general and also discuss the evidence relating to the use of specific approaches to counselling/psychotherapy. Time permitting, this will include recent approaches such as Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) and Polyvagal Theory.