"Sadomasochistic sex is arguably one of the least understood and most demonised forms of consensual sexuality. How able are we to offer ethical therapy to kinky clients when there is so little awareness of the kink experience?"
Life has aquainted me in the past with ends. I have torn enough pages off the calendar to have marked the passing of close relatives, to have waved goodbye to workplaces and work colleagues, to have shared dinner with them and thanked them for the mantel clock.
2 June Three hours between clients. The sun is shining and it’s a shame to be indoors. The tall front hedge needs trimming and even with my new extendable battery-powered hedge-trimmer it’s a job I don’t relish, fearing one day I’ll over-reach and topple off the ladder
On Tuesday my friend Rachel sent me a text; she was in need of urgent advice. She had had three sessions of therapy following an initial assessment. She had left the last session early, convinced that the therapist was not for her.
Shame, incompetence and inadequacy are universal feelings reported after a client’s suicide. Here Andrew Reeves and Sue Nelson argue for better support systems and training to help counsellors dealing with the emotional trauma of a client’s suicide
In September a consultation paper was issued setting out the interim policy that should apply for prosecutions in cases of assisted suicide. Barbara Mitchels and Andrew Reeves reflect on the relevance of the policy for therapists
Synchronicity does sometimes leave me almost speechless; and I’m not referring to a public house of that name in Bolton town centre that I used to frequent many years ago – but that coming together of linked events apparently by pure coincidence
I have recently finished re-reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Many of you will be familiar with it. For those who have never read it, it is set at some undetermined point in the future, where universal happiness is a shared, societal imperative.
There is a great new game doing the rounds, and you have probably already played it without realising. It is a variation on the game you might have played as a child, or at very bad parties, called Whispers.
I have been reminded recently of the paradox we often face in our work as counsellors: that is, of how important the everyday things are, and how we can so easily take them for granted. Let me say a little more of what I mean. I work in a northern university.
I remember once in my counsellor training, many years ago, sitting in a group in which we were engaged in some particularly challenging self-awareness kind of thing
Having received my copy of the recent letter from the Chair of BACP, Dr Lynne Gabriel, regarding the proposed differentiation between counselling and psychotherapy in the lead-up to statutory regulation, I thought I might use this space to reflect further on whether there is a difference between the two activities, and if so, the nature of that difference.
Newcastle is a lovely city. The people are friendly, the bars interesting, the restaurants a-plenty, the Metro a breeze, and the accent really quite fantastic; even when being shouted by a group of 15 young, drunken men running up an escalator the wrong way. How do I know this?
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