"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.
Whilst I found James T Hanson’s article (therapy today, October 2007) on the relationship between counselling and healthcare interesting, it seems to me that he is trapped in the very dualism he highlights.
I applaud Simon Proudlock (‘Presenting a united front’, therapy today, April 2008) when he celebrates the diversity of modalities and styles in which counsellors work
In his letter ‘Need to measure value’ (therapy today, March 2008), Gavin Robinson comments, reasonably enough, that we live in a world ‘measured by money’ and asks whether we might have to ‘work with the reality and not an idealised world?’
I found Sally Brampton’s account of her purgatorial passage through psychoanalysis (‘Journey through therapy’, therapy today, June 2008) highly entertaining, not least because of my own experience of four years of ‘brick wall’ therapy as I coin it
Andy Rogers’ article ‘The art of therapy’ (Therapy Today, December 2008) came as a relief to me in the midst of the debates about regulation and the NHS. I have long thought that the sort of therapy I lean towards has far more to do with art than science.
I have to thank Peter Morrall in his article ‘The trouble with therapy’ (Therapy Today, March 2009) for reminding me what is important about the work that I do as a counsellor. He seems to be saying that no effective or realistic change is possible in the individual if we cannot change society.
I have received the most extraordinary letter from our Chair, Lynne Gabriel, asking for my support in BACP’s dealings with the Health Professions Council
John Daniel’s article ‘The Gay Cure?’ raised a number of questions in my mind. I do not argue with any of Mike King’s objections to those who claim to be able to effect a ‘cure’.
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