Related articles

• What a relief to read Jethro Adlington’s article in July’s issue on ‘Rapport in cyberspace’, which gives a real ‘feel’ for the regular, steady to and fro of online counselling exchanges.
  
  The last article on online therapy ‘The net generation’, in the May 2010 issue, barely paid lip service to the slow, session by session work that most of us do, by email exchange or live text sessions. Instead, Lindsay Dobson chose to focus on the fringe areas, like Second Life and the use of avatars, giving the impression to the uninformed that this is what online therapy is all about. She also seems to think that it is mainly the young who seek counselling online. Not so at all in my experience!
  
  There are a number of people who are particularly interested in online technology and the way this can be harnessed to make therapy more readily accessible, but the majority of us do not use these methods. Counselling, whether online or face to face, is to do with words and the use of language. The old-fashioned way of doing the job, by dialogue between client and counsellor, does not need any of these bells or whistles. They are ‘add-ons’, if you like, for those with a particular liking for technology.
  
  There still seems to be a great deal of suspicion within BACP of online work, as though it is still new and very much untried. This is totally untrue and unnecessary! I’ve been working online since 2003 – I now work only online. Others, in this country and America, have been doing so for very much longer. We work with very much the same kinds of problem as face-to-face counsellors and in very much the same way, ie forming a therapeutic alliance and using this to help the client make the changes that they need to make in order to realise their full potential as human beings. This, in my view, is the whole point and purpose of counselling. I find myself wondering more and more whether those who most vehemently oppose online therapy have ever experienced it themselves.
  
  One point, though, that neither Lindsay nor Jethro has made, concerns the necessity for proper and adequate training before using the internet as a way of working with clients. There are several ways in which online and face-to-face work are very different and there are particular phenomena that can arise when working online that simply do not/cannot happen face to face. Ignorance of these means that they will not be recognised when they occur and this could lead to dangerous situations for both client and counsellor.
  
  I should like to see it become mandatory for any BACP member offering an online service to have undertaken specific, post-qualification training in working online. I should also like to see it become mandatory that supervision for online work is only given by supervisors experienced in this medium themselves.

• Sue Whitlock
  MBACP (Snr Accred), Diploma in Online Counselling (Supervision) (CPCAB 2007)