Master psychotherapist, author and academic Hugh Crago makes a convincing and readable case for the relational arts. How does counselling work? Why doesn't it work for everyone? How is it different from psychology?

1. Thuswecansay,withsomeassurance,
that a relationship characterized
by a high degree of congruence or
genuineness in the therapist; by a
sensitiveandaccurateempathyonthe
partofthetherapist;byahighdegree
ofregard,respect,likingfortheclient
by the therapist, and by an absence
of conditionality in this regard, will
have a high probability of being an
effective therapeutic relationship
The Relational Arts:
A Case For Counselling
And Psychotherapy
How does counselling work?
Why doesn’t it work for everyone?
How is it different from psychology?

2. The Relational Arts:
A Case For Counselling
And Psychotherapy
Hugh Crago

3. 4 5
About the author
Hugh Crago studied English language and literature at the University of New England,
and subsequently at Oxford (1964–72). He retrained as a counsellor in Australia in
1976–7, and completed a two year MA in Counselling Psychology in the United States
in 1981.
Since then, he has worked as a counsellor and psychotherapist with individual adults,
and with families, couples and groups. Over the past twenty years he has lectured in
counselling at four universities and three private training institutes, and for twelve years
co-edited the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy with his wife,
Maureen. Hugh is Adjunct Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at
Western Sydney University.
He is the author of many professional articles and seven books, including
Couple, Family and Group Work (2006). A Safe Place for Change (2012), co-authored
with Penny Gardner, is now a set text in eight counsellor training programs across
Australia and New Zealand.
His latest book, The Stages of Life: Personalities and Patterns in Human Emotional
Development was published by Routledge in 2016. Hugh is a PACFA-registered
counsellor in private practice in Blackheath, NSW.
Acknowledgments
This booklet incorporates the reported experience of counsellors and psychotherapists
who have been my students, supervisees, and group participants over the past few
years.
Earlier drafts of this booklet were read by Maureen Crago, Jonathan Martin, Jenny
Perchman, Jacqui Azize, Penny Gardner, Denis O’Hara, Di Stow and Linda Johnston.
I thank them for their useful and honest feedback, much of which I have incorporated.
What remains is my own responsibility.
Preface
While I have referred in this booklet to ‘counselling’ and ‘psychotherapy’, I have chosen to
use the term ‘counselling’ to cover both psychotherapy and long-term counselling because
it is the term most commonly employed in this country. ‘Counselling’ is what agencies say
they offer. It is the term that most lay people employ.
There are important principles, common to all successful work with distressed individuals,
which can be understood without reference to specific theories and therapeutic
approaches. The Relational Arts will concentrate on those principles. Highlighted inserts
in the text offer detailed examples, references to relevant literature, and short, telling
quotations.
‘Yes, but ..’ boxes acknowledge common objections to counselling/psychotherapy, and
consider their validity. It may suit some readers to skip the boxes, or to read only the ones
that pique their curiosity. However, one key reason for their inclusion is to show that,
contrary to a common misconception, counselling is supported by a substantial body of
research. It is not simply a matter of ‘warm fuzzy feelings’ and ‘unscientific’ intuition.
I’ve subtitled this booklet ‘A Case’, not ‘The Case’, because it reflects my own convictions
and experiences. Others might well emphasise different aspects of counselling and
psychotherapy, but I believe that a substantial number will be in broad agreement with what
I have said.

4. 6 7
Contents
Preface
1. The relational arts 10
1.1 What is this thing called ‘counselling’?
1.2 So what do counsellors and therapists do?
2. The importance of relationships 18
2.1 Relationships are vital
2.2 Inadequate early relationships are damaging
2.3 What attachment research shows us
2.4 Genes are involved too
2.5 Relational damage needs relational healing
2.6 Good counselling resembles good parenting
2.7 Psycho-education is not enough
3. How counsellors make a difference 34
3.1 Counsellors know how to foster trust
3.2 Counsellors slow conversations down so clients can hear themselves
3.3 Counsellors help people ‘own’ aspects of their own difficulties
3.4 Counsellors refrain from judging and criticising
3.5 Counsellors balance support with honest feedback
3.6 Counsellors invite clients to think about problematic behaviours
3.7 Counsellors offer ‘corrective emotional experiences’
3.8 Clients ‘learn their counsellor’
4. Why doesn’t it work for everyone? 44
4.1 Counselling is not for everyone
4.2 Complaining relieves tension
4.3 People resist change
4.4 ‘Why should I seek help? There’s nothing wrong with me!’
4.5 Self-knowledge can be alarming
4.6 The timing must be right
5. What’s distinctive about counselling training? 50
5.1 Psychology: a science in search of a clinical method
5.2 Counselling and Psychotherapy–relational arts in search of a scientific foundation?
5.3 Relationship first, problem-solving second
5.4 Practice and theory must be simultaneously taught
5.5 Training in relational skill and self-awareness
5.6 Training in vulnerability and humility
5.7 Relational interventions for maximum impact
5.8 Competent supervision is vital
5.9 Counselling vs Psychology revisited

5. 9
1 The
relational
arts

6. 10 11
The Relational Arts
1.1 What is this thing called ‘counselling’ or ‘therapy’?
Fair question!
Perhaps the best way to answer it is to print the sorts of things that clients say when they have
had a successful experience of working with a therapist or counsellor:
• ‘She seemed to understand me right from the start. She knew what mattered to me.
I could talk to her.’
• ‘I’d tried a bunch of different people—psychologists, psychiatrists, you know—but
when I went to see this man I knew something was different. He wasn’t just “delivering a
package”. He actually cared about me.’
• ‘I’d made attempts before to get my life back on track, but they’d all failed. I wore people
out and they gave up on me. After a few months I realised that this woman wasn’t going
to give up on me. I knew I would probably lose hope, but I discovered that she wouldn’t.
She’d do the hoping for me until I could do it for myself.’
• ‘I knew he would talk straight with me. When he called me on something, for the first
time ever I didn’t feel put down or judged—I knew what he was telling me came from a
good place.’
None of these comments defines counselling or psychotherapy, but they do tell us how
consumers experience it—and that’s the bit that really matters.
Professionals may argue among themselves about the difference between ‘counselling’ and
‘therapy’, but those differences are largely irrelevant to the people who come to see them.
What clients want is a certain kind of relationship. To my mind, both psychotherapy and
counselling (especially counselling that lasts more than a few sessions) are relationally based.
They create a relationship that allows people to understand themselves, face up to their faults,
and develop more fully as human beings.
My own belief is that any professional who works with clients long-term (from twelve months
to several years) is, at the relational level, doing much the same thing. The particular theories
and ‘techniques’ she or he uses matter a lot to the professionals themselves, but not to their
clients.
Internationally-known American psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has said, ‘It’s the relationship that
heals, the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals’; Richard P. Bentall, a British
psychologist, recognises that ‘kindness’ is the variable that, above all others, affects outcomes
in attempts to assist people with mental illnesses. Kindness can only be displayed within a
human relationship. You can’t get it from a computer screen or a self-help app.
1.2 So what exactly do counsellors and therapists do?
1. Counsellors and therapists listen carefully and deeply. In social conversation, few of us do
any real listening. We’re too intent on getting our own views across, telling our own stories,
or making instant judgements of what others are saying. In striking contrast, counsellors and
therapists pay close attention not just to what clients say, but to how they say it. In the first
few sessions, it is usually the client who does most of the talking. Some people assume this
means the counsellor has little to offer, or ‘doesn’t know much’. In fact, the counsellor is
taking the time to develop a deep understanding of what she is being told and shown. Many
clients have never experienced this before and it generally takes them a while to appreciate
what is going on.
2. Counsellors convey their understanding both in words and in their presence, so that
clients can recognise that they have been understood, respected, taken seriously.
3. Sometimes this simply means counsellors checking that they have got the facts straight.
More often, it means that the counsellor offers a response that goes a bit beyond what
the client has actually said. The counsellor is showing the client that he understands not
only what’s been going on, but also what it might have felt like for the client.
4. After the counselling relationship has developed further, counsellors might offer the client
a tentative interpretation of what it all means. Such interpretations do not come from
some textbook or theory. They develop gradually, as clients help their counsellors to a fuller
and deeper comprehension of their lives, their personalities and their problems.
5. Counsellors are sensitive to what their clients need, and what their clients can cope
with. Good counsellors’ responses will be offered in a way that clients are likely to be able
to accept and use.
6. Counsellors are comfortable with themselves, non-judgemental and non-defensive.
They model self-awareness, which helps clients to do the same.

7. 12 13
7. Counsellors offer their clients feedback that is honest, but respectful—again, it is
sensitively calibrated to what clients are likely to be able to ‘take on board’ at a particular
time. Few people are ready to hear the whole truth about themselves, especially when
feeling anxious and vulnerable.
8. As a trusting relationship builds, it is almost inevitable that clients will act towards their
counsellors in the same way as they behave in their other significant relationships.
Clients may conceal their real feelings towards the counsellor, or become frustrated, upset
or disappointed.
9. It is at those times that highly significant learning can occur. The counsellor has become
important enough to the client for the client to feel invested in healing the temporary
breach in the relationship, and, with the counsellor’s help, is able to acknowledge his or her
own part in what has gone wrong. To invite this kind of encounter, counsellors need to be
braver than their clients in openly discussing what would not be addressed in normal social
conversations.
Most of the activities I’ve listed sound simple and straightforward. Surely anyone
ought to be able to do such ‘basic’ things? Not so.
Some counsellors have innate capacities for good listening and other skills. But all counsellors
need substantial initial training, and ongoing professional training and supervision, in order
to remain objective, ethical and flexible. Counselling and psychotherapy are demanding
professions—both emotionally and intellectually. They require openness to learning about
oneself, as well as about others. Only a small proportion of the population can successfully
practise the ‘relational arts’.
Some organisations that provide counselling offer both brief and longer-term options.
Inevitably, though, it is longer-term counselling and therapy that costs governments more and
invites charges of ‘over-servicing’ and ‘creating dependency’. Yet long term counselling is vital.
Many of the clients who access long term counselling have experienced abuse, neglect or
trauma in childhood and their adult relationships may be similarly fractured. Some suffer from
severe mental illness, others have developed addictions, or have spent time in prison.
Almost all of them have higher than average levels of sensitivity, impulsivity or both, making
them particularly vulnerable to the challenges that life throws at most of us. Self-harm and
suicide attempts are not uncommon. Such clients are encountered in child protection services,
in rehabilitation facilities and in outpatient mental health programs. But they also present to
community-based organisations, church-based welfare organisations, and, of course, to GPs.
These clients (sometimes referred to as ‘complex needs’ clients) are rarely helped by
brief counselling, whatever the model that may be employed. They require more than
twelve sessions of cognitive-behavioural therapy. They do not find mindfulness or positive
affirmations helpful. They cannot use sound advice or self-regulation strategies. (Some
emotionally healthier clients may gain a great deal from such interventions.)
Complex needs clients require continuing warmth and support in combination with skilfully-
calibrated challenge. Self-exploration must occur, but the pace cannot be forced, or clients
will simply drop out. In such counselling, we see a distinct approach to human emotional
difficulties—an approach in which the interpersonal sensitivity and emotional maturity of
the professional are key to successful client outcomes, because good outcomes depend
heavily on the kind of relationship the counsellor can maintain with the client. Without that
relationship, lasting change is unlikely (see 2.3).
Needless to say, some psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists do provide such
relationships—not just counsellors. The difference is that competent counsellors and
psychotherapists are selected for, and systematically trained in, the personal capacities that
such work requires (see 5.0 below). In the UK, the US and many other countries, counselling
and psychotherapy have for many years been accepted as professional disciplines in their
own right, not simply as skill sets that any helping professional can ‘pick up’. In Australia,
discipline-specific training programs in the relational arts are offered in Universities as well
as in accredited private institutes and colleges. Unfortunately, many employing organisations
have been slow to follow their lead. Overwhelmingly, most clinical positions are reserved for
psychologists and social workers.
Yet the relational arts offer a distinct and valuable alternative to social work, psychology and
psychiatry. The kind of counselling described in this booklet amounts to experiential re-
education. Instead of the professional imparting new information to a client, or training
the client in new strategies, the the counsellor or therapist offers significantly different
experiences to the client within the therapeutic relationship itself. Those experiences generate
new awareness and new behaviour without the counsellor relying overmuch on cognitive
input and advice-giving (‘coaching’), although these things can have a place at times.
Providing ‘experiential re-education’ demands specific qualities in the counsellor, qualities
which must be actively fostered in training (see 5.0 below). Many professionals who provide
counselling (including large numbers of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, doctors,
nurses and welfare workers) have never had that kind of training.

8. 14 15
Counselling is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for everyone (see 4.0). It does not always work.
Some individuals do not relate to it, or benefit from it. However, skilled long-term counselling
can restore many individuals to satisfying, productive lives. In the longer term, it saves
governments millions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on maintaining individuals in
prisons, hospitals and other facilities, or on paying out social security benefits.
‘I see and I forget; I hear and I remember; I do and I understand’
This Chinese maxim, incorrectly attributed to Lao Tzu (Confucius), does convey
the essence of the distinction between cognitive knowing (knowing about
something), and experiential knowing (knowing something through felt
experience). In relation to counselling, the client is able to change because she has
felt different in the counsellor’s presence, and in due course, finds that her own
way of being has changed significantly. The difference between cognitive knowing
and experiential knowing is greatly illuminated by research over the past forty or
fifty years into the distinct ‘personalities’ of the two hemispheres of the cerebral
cortex. Cognitive knowing is the way that the left hemisphere pays attention to the
world, while experiential knowing via feelings is the mode of the right hemisphere.
For more on this, see McGilchrist, 2009 and Schore, 2012. Both kinds of knowing
are necessary for lasting change to occur in complex, entrenched human
problems. Any treatment approach that proceeds from one alone is likely to
be of limited effectiveness.
Onthelongtermcosttosocietyofuntreatedemotionaldysfunction,
as compared with the cost of long term therapeutic intervention,
see the following:
The long term costs of child abuse are listed as future drug and alcohol abuse,
mental illness, poor health, homelessness, juvenile offending, criminality and
incarceration (‘The Economic Costs of Child Abuse and Neglect’, Child, Family,
Community Australia Resource Sheet, September, 2016, Canberra, Australian
Government/Australian Institute of Family Studies).
‘Based on a lifetime simulation model …[the researchers estimated that] if just ten
per cent of eligible offenders were sent to community-based treatment programs
rather than prison, the criminal justice system would save $4.8 billion when compared
to current practices. Zarkin et al. in Crime and Delinquency, November 2016.
‘Current estimates reveal that it costs around $100,000 per annum to keep a man
in custody …We estimate that treatment at Glebe House [rehabilitation facility in
Sydney] costs less than $20,000 per person (including indefinite aftercare). Do the
math!’ Glebe House Annual Report, 2013–2014, p. 7.

9. 16 17
2 The importance
of relationships

10. 18 19
The importance of relationships
2.1 Relationships are vital
There is overwhelming evidence for the crucial importance of healthy, supportive relationships
in maintaining physical and mental health. We humans are social animals, and we flourish when
sustained by our families, our intimate partnerships, our friendships, and our work teams.
Individuals who are happily partnered live longer, have better physical health, and are less
likely to suffer from mental illnesses than those who are not. Loneliness does not, in itself,
condemn a person to depression or early physical decline, but living alone without significant
relationships with neighbours, family or friends often does.
The brains of human babies develop—or fail to develop—within relationships with caregivers.
Children learn to value themselves, or devalue themselves, within relationships. The
widely-reported case of the Romanian orphans in the 1990s reminds us that children can
be adequately fed and cared for at a physical level, but still suffer substantial emotional and
cognitive deficits when deprived of affectionate relationships with reliable adults.
For all of these reasons, a relational approach to counselling makes sense. Helping
professionals who pay close attention to the relationship between them and their clients are
likely to be more effective in the long term than professionals who see the relationship simply
as a vehicle for getting information across.
American physician Lissa Rankin’s Ted Talk ‘Loneliness’ presents an excellent
summary of research on the links between social isolation and both physical and
mental health (available on You tube).
‘Indeed, as psychiatrist Stephan Priebe and psychologist Rose McCabe … have
recently demonstrated in a detailed review of a growing body of research, there
is now evidence that the quality of the [therapeutic] alliance predicts, not only
symptoms and attitudes towards treatment, but also a wide range of outcomes,
includingthepatient’squalityoflife,howmuchtimeisspentinhospital,thepatient’s
ability to function socially, and his willingness to engage with psychiatric services’
Richard P. Benthall (2009), Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail,
Penguin: 260.
Yes, but … Isn’t life about making the best of the hand you’re dealt? Plenty of
people have achieved a hell of a lot despite having had a tough childhood.
This stuff about’ lack of love’ is just a bunch of excuses!
Is this you? Some parents provide very well for their children’s physical needs and
encourage them in sports and/or academic activities, but show little interest in
their feelings, and praise them mainly if they’re ‘good’. Children of these parents
often become adults who believe in self-reliance. That doesn’t mean that their
parents were intentionally abusive or uncaring. It does mean that as children they
didn’t get enough of what they most needed, and so were forced to adapt to an
emotional ‘climate of scarcity’.
Such adults often do become ‘high achievers’—but they find it hard to reveal
their inner hopes and fears even to intimates, and often treat their own children
as they themselves have been treated. Attachment Theory refers to this type of
adult as ‘avoidant’—they avoid expressing their own emotions directly, and feel
uncomfortable when others do so.
Avoidantly-attached people may devalue the importance of love and closeness
because they themselves have had to do without them. (See 2.3 below for
further discussion on Attachment Theory).

11. 20 21
2.2 Inadequate early relationships damage people
Unlike puppies or lion cubs, human children are dependent on their adult caregivers for years
before they can survive on their own. This means that many of our most important learnings
occur by the age of eighteen months—not a dramatic exaggeration, but a developmental fact.
Tiny children cannot talk yet, but they take in everything that happens around them, and try to
make sense out of it with their powerful but still-immature brains.
Overwhelmingly, experts in cognitive development agree that young children believe they are
responsible when distressing things happen to them. If they fail to experience love from their
caregivers, young children may also come to believe that they are ‘unloveable’. It must be their
fault that nobody seems to care about them. These convictions often survive into adulthood.
People who believe they are unloveable are much more vulnerable to life’s stresses and
shocks. They are much more likely to become addicted, get involved in crime, develop
depression and anxiety, or experience repeated relationship breakdowns. Unwittingly, they
‘sabotage their own success’.
Over the past forty-odd years, mainstream psychology has come to accept that human beings
are profoundly influenced by their beliefs, and that these beliefs affect both how they feel and
how they act. This assumption has produced cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and (more
recently) ‘schema therapy’. Many psychologists now believe that powerful, irrational beliefs
can be formed very early in life, and that adults can be unaware of how these convictions
affect their behaviour and their emotions (see text box p. 28 for evidence that supports the
likelihood of some beliefs being formed in the first year or two of life) .
In this respect, mainstream psychology has drawn considerably closer to the position that the
relational arts have held since Freud’s day.
Examples
Imagine a baby whose mother is suffering postnatal depression. She is paralysed
by her own distress, and when the baby cries, it makes her feel worse. She has no
reserves of energy and caring left. If she is raising her child without a partner and
without family support, there may be nobody there to step in and take over while
she recovers. The baby, inevitably, will be affected because its mother cannot give
it what it needs. That child is likely to grow up feeling ‘there must be something
wrong with me’.
When the child becomes an adult, her beliefs about herself and others will have been
shaped by that lack. What she experienced with her mother will be re-experienced
with her adult partner or spouse. She won’t be aware of this connection. She will
simply be aware of a leaden feeling, a hopelessness. In talking with a counsellor, she
may discover that deep down, she believes that she ‘doesn’t deserve to be loved’.
Or imagine a child who, in his first six or seven years of life, is shunted from one
caregiver to another. No sooner does he get attached to one adult than that adult
moves interstate, goes into hospital or rehab, or withdraws energy from the child in
order to invest it in a new partner. This child comes to believe that ‘You can’t trust
anyone to stay around’. As an adult, he bails out of relationships as soon as they
seem to be getting serious—and so confirms his own belief that nobody will ever
care enough about him to stay with him.
If that child is lucky enough to find a stable caregiver for the latter part of his
childhood and adolescence, then the effects of the earlier years of instability will
be mitigated. But they will still shape his expectations. He may still, deep down,
believe that he himself is unloveable.

12. 22 23
2.3 What attachment research shows us
Children whose caregivers pay attention to their feelings, and supply what the child needs
(including abundant love and affirmation), will grow up ‘securely attached’—affectionate,
trusting and confident. That doesn’t make them immune from future problems, but it helps
a lot!
Counsellors and psychotherapists don’t see too many adults who were securely attached as
children. Mostly, they see the ones who were insecurely attached. What does that mean? It
means that infants figure out ways of behaving that will allow them to get at least some of
what they need from their adult caregivers. These ‘strategies’ work reasonably well at the
time, but leave them inadequately prepared for healthy adult relationships. Some learn to
suppress anger or sadness because their caregivers cannot tolerate those feelings (avoidant
attachment). They come to adulthood unable to voice how they really feel, and spend their
time ‘trying to be good’, only to end up feeling isolated and resentful.
Others learn to get attention by being ‘helplessly bad’—alternating between angry outbursts
and helpless crying (ambivalent attachment). As adults, they continue to alternate between
blaming others for their problems (‘It’s all your fault, you’ve let me down’) and despairing
helplessness (‘I give up, it’s all too hard’). They do this because as children they learned
experientially that attracting negative attention from parents was better than receiving no
attention at all. At least they mattered enough to be yelled at!
As adults, ambivalently attached individuals continue to attract negative attention from family,
partners and society in general. Their relationships are often volatile and sometimes violent,
they drive too fast, have unsafe sex, and use drugs that put their mental and physical health at
risk. They may ‘cut’ or make suicide attempts. Ambivalently-attached clients may readily trust
a counsellor, and feel no shame about seeking help—but equally, they may withdraw abruptly
when the going gets tough, or when they feel ‘judged’ or ‘blamed’. They have not learned
to evaluate such feelings objectively, and they haven’t learned to ‘hang in there’ when a
relationship is under stress. If their partner lets them down, they feel ‘abandoned’ and believe
their only course is to withdraw from the relationship.
So how did those individuals miss out on what comes naturally to securely attached people?
From many years of attachment research, we actually know much of the answer to that. We
know that infants adopt these dysfunctional strategies in the context of particular kinds of
parent/caregiver behaviour. Parents who themselves have difficulty in tolerating sadness or
anger tend to produce children who deliberately suppress their own sadness or anger. Parents
who do express their feelings, but dramatically and unpredictably, tend to produce children
who learn to be ‘helplessly bad’. Of course, this is not always the case.
Cassidy, Jones and Shaver (2013): ‘Contributions of Attachment Theory and
Research: A Framework for Future Research, Translation and Policy.’ Developmental
Psychopathology (25, 4 0.2): 1415–1434. Available online via Pub Med.
In early childhood, we learn our most important lessons within the context of our
relationship to our parents (or other caregivers) and some of these lessons are,
unfortunately, negative ones. The negative experiences of one generation often
affect the next, so that abuse, neglect and trauma can recur in a family.
Yes, but … isn’t all this talk of early experiences being so damaging just a
convenient myth? How do we know that traumas repeat? What’s the evidence?
The evidence does exist. However, our ‘think positive’ age doesn’t like to be
reminded of it.
Children who have had a parent suicide are five times more likely (as adults) to
attempt suicide themselves. Children who have experienced parental couple
violence are more likely to be violent themselves—or to pick a partner who will
be violent to them. Children whose parents have divorced are more likely to see
divorce as an option in their own adult relationships, and those with a substance-
abusing parent are more likely to develop addictions.
SeeGurejeetal.(2011).‘ParentalPsychopathologyandtheRiskofSuicidalBehaviour
in their Offspring’. Mol Psychiatry, 16 (12): 1221–1233; Cosandra McNeal, Paul R.
Amato (1998): ‘Parents’ Marital Violence: ‘Longterm Consequences for Children’
Journal of Family Issues, 19, 2: 123–139; Paul R. Amato (1996); Explaining the
Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce’ Journal of Marriage and the Family,
58: 628–640.

13. 24 25
Having experienced significant trauma as a child makes it more likely that we will be
re-traumatised as older children or adults. School bullies and adult child abusers notoriously
seek out the kid whose face and body communicate shame and self-doubt. Instinctively, they
know that kid will be a ‘softer’ target than its more resilient peers.
2.4 Genes are involved too
To many people attachment research looks like parent-blaming (which often means, ‘mother-
blaming’), because so much importance is attached to how the parent’s behaviour affects their
developing infant. There is another side to this story, which both psychology and counselling/
psychotherapy have tended to neglect or downplay. That ‘other side’ is the influence of
genetics.
Fifty years of temperament research has shown that all of us are significantly shaped by the
genetic ‘blueprint’ we inherit. There’s clear evidence that some of us are born more confident,
more sociable, and more even-tempered than others. And some of us are born more anxious,
less confident, and more reactive to stress. That bundle of traits is bound to make us more
vulnerable to adverse experiences of all kinds, both as children and as adults. Parents cannot
choose what genes their children will inherit (at least, not yet). Parents with a confident,
sociable child have a considerably easier task than parents with a fearful, sensitive and highly
reactive child. And confident, sociable children are also easier to like—which gives them a
better chance of growing up securely attached!
In his very readable book The Body Keeps the Score (Norton, 2014), American
psychiatrist and international trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk explains in detail
and with abundant research evidence why traumatised children often become
traumatised adults. Cutting-edge epigenetic research is now indicating that severely
traumatisedparentscanpassonmolecular‘tags’totheirchildren’sgenes—chemical
adhesions that do not alter the gene, but make it more likely that gene will be
activated later in the child’s life. See Yehuda et al. (2014), ‘Influences of Maternal
and Paternal PTSD on Epigenetic Regulation of the Glucocortical Receptor Gene in
Holocaust Survivor Offspring’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 8: 872–880.
But good parenting can make a crucial difference to a child’s ability to cope with the challenges
posed by its genetic endowment. Empathic parents can influence whether or not a child grows
up feeling that ‘there’s something wrong with me’. Supportive, encouraging parents can raise
their child’s level of agency—‘I have some problems, but I can overcome them’.
The truth is that both genetic temperament and parenting style influence a child’s future.
Biology is not destiny, but parents faced with a ‘difficult’ child must sometimes act in ways
that may seem counter-intuitive in order to give that child the best chance of a happy, secure
adulthood.
Skilled, well-informed counselling, tailored to the individual child and parent, can make a very
big difference to the parents of ‘difficult’ children, even when that difficulty is partly genetic
in origin.
Modern temperament research began with American psychiatrists Alexander
Thomas and Stella Chess who in the 1960s gathered information from parents on
the behavioural traits of their infants at 3 months, and established that (at least in the
eyes of mothers) babies were clearly different. (See their Behavioural Individuality
in Early Childhood, 1963, and subsequent publications.) Some, though not all,
of these temperamental traits continued to be significant in the child’s later life.
While this early research was challenged on methodological grounds, and for many
years largely ignored by mainstream developmentalists, Harvard professor Jerome
Kagan’s many years of laboratory research have demonstrated beyond any doubt
the existence of physiologically-based behavioural and mood differences between
children. He described two broad categories of human infants, which he now calls
‘high-reactive’ and ‘low-reactive’. Kagan’s work is presented without the technical
details in his general-audience book The Temperamental Thread: How Genes,
Culture, Time and Luck Make Us Who We Are (Dana, 2010).
That a child’s genetic temperament invites particular behaviours from its caregivers
was established by Reiss, Neiderhiser, Hetherington and Plomin (2003). The
Relationship Code: Deciphering Genetic and Social Influences on Adolescent
Development (Harvard University Press). Unfortunately, this long book, with its
mass of diagrams and statistical tables, is hard to read even for professionals (which
may explain why it is so rarely referred to), but its evidence is overwhelming.

14. 26 27
2.5 Relational damage needs relational healing
When they come to see a counsellor, many clients will simply be aware of something painful or
‘wrong’ about their life. They’ll say things like:
• ‘I feel down all the time, and my wife can’t stand it’
• ‘I get really worried about things and my boyfriend thinks I’ve got a serious problem’
• ‘I have to keep checking to make sure I’ve locked the front door—it’s crazy!’
• ‘I panic as soon as he starts wanting a commitment, and I just dump him! It happens
every time!’
• ‘Is this all life’s meant to be? Surely a relationship is supposed to make you both feel good?’
• ‘I think I’ve got an anger management problem. I keep having meltdowns with my kids.’
Few will link adult difficulties like these with their experiences as a child, and they may not
even remember those experiences anyway. But in their earlier years they will have formed
particular attitudes, expectations, and ways of behaving, and these will show up in their adult
relationships—most often with their intimate partners, but also (to a lesser degree) with their
children, friends or work colleagues.
When their current circumstances remind them of something they experienced in the past,
human beings can re-experience sensations and feelings they experienced back then—even
something experienced in early childhood. So the experience of becoming a parent ‘triggers’
all sorts of childhood memories and behaviours in us, without our conscious awareness that
this is happening.
American psychologist Daniel Schacter’s Searching for Memory: The Brain,
the Mind and the Past (Basic Books, 1996) remains the best-written and most
authoritative account of memory research. Forensic Psychiatrist Lenore Terr’s
Unchained Memories (Basic Books, 1994) presents many fascinating case studies
of how traumatic memories can lie dormant for many years before being revived by
tiny details of someone’s present experience—sunlight shining on a small child’s
reddish-blonde hair, for example.
If our earliest relationships with caregivers formed our expectations of all significant
relationships, then it follows that in order to address those expectations, we need to be ‘held’
within a professional relationship that is strong and caring enough to permit an honest re-
examination of what we learned back then. Providing this is partly a matter of a counsellor’s
professional skill, but it is also a matter of ‘personal match’ between counsellor and client. No
counsellor is going to be ‘right’ for every client, and until a client experiences such a match,
she or he is unlikely to hang in there long enough to make substantial progress.
Matching is a subtle thing. Sometimes it may mean that the counsellor shares some of the
same temperamental characteristics as the client—even though the counsellor will normally
say nothing about that, the client will sense it: ‘this person seems to understand me’. Or it
may be a matter of the counsellor having had some similar experiences to the client—though
that is not essential or even necessary. What is essential is that clients sense the counsellor’s
understanding and acceptance.
The widely-quoted ‘common factors’ research on counselling and psychotherapy
is based on meta-analyses of many studies that investigated what factors were
significant in whether or not therapy was effective for clients. The researchers
found that ‘client factors’ (e.g. clients’ level of initial motivation, or their level of
social support) over which professionals had no control accounted for 40% of
the differences in outcome; 15% depended on expectancy and placebo effects (if
clients expect to get better, they often will); only 15% on the specific technique or
approach used by the therapist but no less than 30% on the therapeutic relationship
itself (including the therapist’s warmth, empathy and encouragement). While all of
these figures are essentially estimates, and while arguments continue as to the exact
weighting of each factor, there is widespread agreement that the client–therapist
relationship is the most important controllable factor involved in whether or not
clients achieve positive outcomes.
For a recent summary of the whole common factors debate, see Bruce E. Wampold
and Zac E. Imel, The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes
Therapy Work, 2nd Edn, Routledge/Taylor Francis, 2015.

15. 28 29
Clients may need help, initially, to recognise where their patterns came from; but even with
this awareness, the patterns may not change until clients find themselves in a relationship
with a professional who behaves in a significantly different way from their parents. This is
sometimes called a ‘corrective emotional experience’. A skilled counsellor can assist clients
to face up to how their behaviour affects them in the here and now—that is, in the actual
way they relate to the counsellor in the room. See below, 3.7
2.6 Good counselling resembles good parenting
Although counsellors and psychotherapists are professionals working with (mostly) adult
clients, there are some important ways in which good counselling resembles good parenting:
• Good counsellors do not go away and leave their clients. Wherever they can, responsible
professionals ‘stay and finish the job’. When a client drops out and then reappears a few
months later, her counsellor won’t refuse to see her, but instead will try to help her to
understand why she felt the need to pull out.
• Good counsellors set limits and offer challenges as well as providing care and
encouragement. Good parenting is ‘authoritative’. It is not authoritarian and punitive,
but nor is it permissive.
• Good counsellors put the welfare and best interests of their clients ahead of their own
needs for an easy, gratifying life. They are willing to go the extra mile for clients who they
know might require more support in a time of crisis.
• Counsellors do not need appreciation or praise from their clients, and their care and
concern are not ‘conditional’ on clients being grateful. That’s one key difference between
a counsellor and a close friend or lover. Like good parents, counsellors are prepared to offer
care and commitment without necessarily getting ‘anything back’.
• Over time, counsellors’ empathy, respect and calmness in a crisis (‘non-anxious presence’)
can assist their clients to develop these qualities within themselves. See below 3.8
Obviously, clients with entrenched difficulties in living and relating cannot be ‘re-parented’
in a relationship of very short duration. For the above qualities to make a difference, most
individuals would need a therapeutic relationship of at least 12 months’ duration, and many
will need more than that. Unfortunately, this level of counselling service is not readily available
in many public mental health and counselling facilities. As a society we have, erroneously,
come to believe that short term interventions are all that clients ‘really need’.
The corporatisation of the helping sector has encouraged this irrational stance,
which is not ‘evidence-based’.
Many of our most pressured welfare services have a very high staff turnover. Professional staff
can be overwhelmed by the neediness and bitterness of their clients, particularly if staff have
not been adequately trained in the first place, and many rapidly move on to less demanding
work. So inevitably, vulnerable clients (who have in various ways been neglected or abandoned
in childhood) will once again feel neglected or abandoned by those who ought to have cared
for them. This is unfortunate and undesirable, to say the least.
Some services fail even to recognise that high turnover of their counsellors and case managers
can have these adverse effects.
The effects of high staff turnover are probably most harsh in child protection and mental
health services, where consistency of care from a trusted professional can make an enormous
difference in the lives of at least some adult clients, and hence to the future of their children.
All too often, that care cannot be maintained, clients’ trust is broken, and abuse, neglect or
relapse are the predictable consequences.
Some counselling services do understand how important it is for clients to have access to the same
counsellor, once a trusting relationship is established—but external pressures to ‘push clients
through’ and ‘deliver outcomes’ are increasingly jeopardising the principle that some clients will
need consistency of care over the long haul. Many agencies are now ruling that clients can only be
seen for a certain number of sessions, leaving many clients (and especially older clients with little
social support outside of the counselling relationship) alone and vulnerable.
‘A lot of my clients experience multiple employment consultants in a short period
of time, and for many of them, I am the only consistency. If there’s one thing I have
brought to my clients, it’s that I have rarely been absent in my three years there …
whereas they’ll often turn up for an interview with their employment consultant,
and that person is not there, has left, or been sacked, and clients don’t find out
until they arrive for the appointment. They often say, “Then I have to sit down and
go through my story all over again—and Shawn, I’ve done this ten times, and I’m
so over it!”’ Stevenson and Crago (2015) ‘Coming awake: Counselling with the long
term unemployed’ in Psychotherapy in Australia 21, 1: 105.

16. 30 31
2.7 Psychoeducation is not enough
Because medicine, law and other professions operate mainly on the ‘brief expert consultation’
model (in which the professional’s main role is to provide information, treatment or advocacy)
it is often assumed that counselling is, or should be, similar. Yet, given the existence of
thousands of self-help books, recordings, TV programs, websites and blogs, we would expect
that few people would need to engage in counselling if they simply needed information to
help them solve their problems!
Deep-seated personal and relational difficulties are not healed by information because
new information does not address the inadequate relationships within which the
‘old information’ was learned. So when adults come to discuss these difficulties with
professionals, they may understand perfectly what is said to them—yet somehow, all that
information and sensible advice does not make any difference to what they do, or how
they feel.
As mentioned previously in this booklet, information and advice speak to the rational left
hemisphere of the human cerebral cortex; whereas the vague yet powerful feelings that cause
us distress as adults originate in the right hemisphere. A right-hemisphere connection with a
trusted person is necessary for clients to begin to experience themselves differently. Clients
will then say things like ‘For the first time, I felt heard’ or ‘I’ve finally found someone who
gets me!’
‘A right hemisphere connection with a trusted person is necessary …’
See Alan Schore, 2012; The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy (Norton, 2012: 85-109).
Within the context of a trusting relationship, where the client feels understood and supported,
information is absorbed more profoundly, because the relationship itself becomes part of what
is learned. Again, this is experiential learning rather than didactic instruction. After successful
counselling, clients take away with them positive memories of the counsellor, her warmth, her
ability to understand them, her patience, the fact that she offered criticisms that they could
accept.
Yes, but … I don’t really understand what you mean when you say ‘the
relationship itself becomes part of what is learned’.
Think about the teacher who made the most difference to you at school. Do you
remember all the details of her classes, all the knowledge you mastered with
her? Or do you remember her because she seemed to believe in you, because
she ‘made learning fun’, because you didn’t fear that she would make sarcastic
comments about you, as some of the others did? Most people remember teachers
for relational reasons, not for their academic brilliance or their pedagogic skills.
It is quite similar in counselling—except that what happens in counselling can be
deeper and more profound because the subject is not maths or history or science,
but you, and specifically, you at your most vulnerable. How you are treated by the
professional you consult around your shame, your ‘badness’, your sense of failure,
is going to be more crucial even than how you were treated by your teacher.
Of course that process demands that counsellors be unusually mature and highly
ethical human beings—a subject we’ll return to (see 5.0 below). Unfortunately,
not all counsellors are in that category—but that is what our training should
aim for.

17. 32 33
3 How counsellors
make a difference

18. 34 35
How counsellors make a difference
3.1 Counsellors know how to foster trust
A good counsellor’s first job is to gain the client’s trust, and to maintain it.
Many clients find it hard to trust others. Some clients trust too easily (this is sometimes called
‘lack of boundaries’). Good counsellors read the client’s signals, and work patiently to create
the trust that may be lacking initially, or to ‘slow down’ a person who rushes too quickly into
laying bare her vulnerability. John (in the above example) needed time before he could ‘feel
calm and safe’. He needed to feel that he was in control of the process. He is an adolescent,
but adults also need to feel safe and respected.
Many of the behaviours we associate with counsellors (like ‘reflective listening’) are actually
ways of inducing trust. Reflecting resembles the way that good mothers respond to their
babies—the baby smiles, the mother smiles back; the baby puts her head to one side, the
mother does the same—and so on. This is not just a game. The mother is showing her baby
that it has successfully communicated; she is teaching it to ‘take turns’; and above all, she is
communicating affection, care and delight. The mother’s mirroring affirms and validates the
baby, ‘shows it to itself’. When counsellors reflect, they show clients to themselves.
After three months of weekly counselling, John [high school student] stated ‘I like
being in this room. I feel calm and safe when I’m here. I like how you don’t ask me
lots of questions and you don’t push. It’s so good that I can get things off my chest.’
Yes, but … I don’t see the point of ‘reflective listening’. It’s just a way counsellors
can pretend that they have something to offer when really, they’re stumped! They
just parrot back what the client has said. This is a serious misunderstanding of
how reflective listening actually works. A skilled counsellor doesn’t ‘parrot back’.
Instead, she uses her own words to show the client what she thinks the client is
trying to communicate. By doing that, she is also showing the client that she wants
to understand, that she cares enough to keep trying.
3.2 Counsellors slow conversation down so clients can
hear themselves
Most people talk without much thought. In conversation, they pour out their opinions and
feelings, pay little attention to what the other one is saying, and frequently talk over one
another. Counsellors slow conversations down by checking that they have understood
their client correctly (this is why recorded counselling sessions sometimes sound boringly
repetitive). But clients do not experience a good counselling session as boring. Rather,
through the counsellor’s skilled assistance, they ‘listen to themselves’ for, perhaps, the first
time in their lives. This helps them to discover what they think, how they feel, and what they
really desire for themselves and their loved ones.
Clientscannotlearntoactandthinkdifferentlyuntiltrustinthehelperisestablished.
With some clients, this trust will be tested again and again, and may need to be
re-established. It may take months or even years. Many clients relax once they realise
that they will not be pressured to talk about difficult issues until they feel ready.
This does not mean that counsellors refuse to assist clients to face the difficult
issues: it simply means that they are willing to wait until the optimal time—a matter
of both clinical experience and willingness to trust their own instincts.
I had this client who was pretty intense. I kept reflecting what she’d said, and most
clients would’ve felt I’d ‘got them’, but this one kept saying, ‘No, you don’t get it!’
Eventually, I realised the problem—I was too calm! So I said, in a much louder
voice than I normally use: ‘You feel like you’ve just been hit by an express train!’
and for the first time, she looked really relieved, and said, ‘So you do understand
after all!’
This speaker, a psychologist who was also an experienced counsellor, has just
realised that some clients need their counsellor’s responses to match their own
level of intensity—otherwise, they simply won’t feel heard. Of course, there are also
clients who need their counsellor to show very little feeling. If the counsellor seems
too intense, they start to feel unsafe. Good counsellors are skilled at monitoring
their clients’ responses to them, and will consciously alter their way of talking to
enable their clients to feel better understood—something that rarely happens in
ordinary social conversation!

19. 36 37
3.3 Counsellors help clients ‘own’ aspects of their own difficulties
Once a trusting relationship is established with a counsellor, clients can gradually move
towards taking more responsibility for their own difficulties instead of simply blaming others.
Assisting a client to accept some responsibility for his own problems is not easy. Again, it is a
matter of the counsellor reading the client’s signals accurately, instead of pushing the client
further than he is ready to go at that time. Some clients will simply quit if they feel that the
counsellor is blaming or judging them.
Often, clients need to start feeling better about themselves before they are ready to face up
to their own responsibility for the problems they encounter. In these cases, it’s a question of
‘gain before pain’. Much later, when a client has developed more resilience, it may be possible
for her to realise that pain must sometimes come before gain.
3.4 Counsellors refrain from judging or criticising
Instead they engage their clients in a non-blaming but honest dialogue about their problematic
behaviours. From this, clients learn that even shameful or painful things can be discussed
without getting angry or defensive. Non-blaming conversations, especially when repeated
many times, offer clients the chance to question their automatic reactions, and they begin to
deal more constructively with the challenges life presents. This is very different from telling
clients what is wrong with them, and then telling them how they should change it—all in a
couple of sessions!
Yes, but … isn’t that just being soft on people? How are they ever going to
change unless they face up to themselves?
This objection is typical of those who have formed ‘knock some sense into ’em’
attitudes to human failings.
Researchers established long ago that punishment (‘aversive consequences’ in
the language of behaviourist psychology) is generally less effective in changing
human behaviour than praise for appropriate behaviour. In the days of physical
punishment in schools, caning had little positive effect on ‘bad’ kids—often, it
made them heroes in the eyes of their peers, while desensitising them to the effect
of physical abuse and reducing their empathy for the suffering of others.
Psychologist John Gottman, after researching thousands of couples, concluded that
the ratio of positive to negative interactions within a relationship needed to be five
to one in order to predict stability in that relationship. In other words, five positive
interactions (which included non-verbal interactions like smiling, touching, hugs,
etc) were needed to ‘counteract’ every harsh, punishing or critical interaction. See
J. Gottman, What Predicts Divorce, 1994.
Yes, punishment can sometimes ‘work’ in the short term—but not in a healthy or
positive way. Punishment results in sullen obedience, not willing co-operation; in
hate, not love, and in a determination never to show vulnerability to the one who
punishes us. In counselling, clients only start to shift their problematic behaviours
when they feel safe enough to show their vulnerability, and the counsellor responds
with empathy and respect, rather than the harsh criticism they have come to expect.

20. 38 39
3.5 Counsellors balance support with honest feedback
Counsellors skilfully balance affirmation and support with carefully-timed feedback. This
feedback is offered in a calm, tactful way. When clients respond with hurt or anger, counsellors
acknowledge the client’s feelings, rather than arguing. Clearly, this takes a great deal of self-
control on the counsellor’s part, and some personalities find this easier to achieve than others.
Counsellors should be selected for training on the basis of this and other relevant personal
qualities (see 5.0 below).
3.6 Counsellors invite clients to think about problematic
behaviours
‘If I do this, what will be the likely consequences? What impact is my action likely to have on
people close to me?’ Initially, it is the counsellor who poses such questions, but over time,
clients develop the ability to ask the questions themselves. Impulsive, reactive clients (typically
ambivalently attached) may have lived their whole lives without learning to think. They have
acted on the basis of ‘what feels right’, even if they ‘know’ (from past experience) that such
actions will get them into trouble.
3.7 Counsellors offer ‘corrective emotional experiences’
Counsellors ‘learn their clients’ in depth and detail. They become familiar with a client’s typical
patterns of relating to others. These patterns invite the counsellor to respond in the same
way that others in the client’s life have responded—to give up, try harder, rescue, blame, feel
martyred, etc. But the counsellor subtly modifies his/her behaviour so that the client does not
get the unhelpful response she/he has learned to expect from others.
For instance, the client complains about something the counsellor has said. She has upset
people in the past by making such complaints. She expects that the counsellor, too, will
be upset or critical. Instead, the counsellor calmly listens, takes the complaint seriously,
and is prepared to discuss its validity. This can create what Franz Alexander in 1954 called a
‘corrective emotional experience’ for clients—they encounter a response that is contrary to
their ingrained expectations, and in a positive way.
3.8 Clients ‘learn their counsellor’
Over longer-term counselling, clients gradually ‘internalise’ a trusted counsellor. They report
thinking, ‘What would you [my counsellor] say?’ or, ‘I think you [counsellor] would probably
ask me what is likely to happen if I go ahead with this’. In other words, the counsellor’s voice,
objective opinions and calming presence become an internal ‘resource’ for the client even
when the counsellor is not present. By contrast, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as practised
by many psychologists, teaches clients to question their own irrational thoughts, and to apply
logical reasoning to their fears. In long term counselling, clients will often learn to do these
things without the professional necessarily ‘teaching’ them (in a formal way).

21. 40 41
So how do we know when counselling or psychotherapy has been successful?
1. People who have had successful long term counselling often speak more slowly
than they did before. This may sound a strange way of measuring effectiveness,
but it points to an increase in the client’s capacity to speak thoughtfully rather
than impulsively. It also suggests that the client may have ‘internalised’ a
therapist’s quiet, thoughtful presence.
2. People who have experienced successful long term counselling make better
decisions, informed by both their ‘heart’ and their ‘head’. Interestingly, this
balance often comes about because individuals learn to acknowledge their
feelings and take them seriously. This is very different from simply ‘acting on’
strong feelings without examining them, or even being aware of them!
3. The experience of successful long term counselling generates behavioural
flexibility. Instead of ‘only knowing one way’, the client has learned alternative
ways of behaving in a given situation and can choose the most appropriate.
4. People often view counselling and therapy as a kind of ‘psychological surgery’,
the purpose of which is to eliminate ‘undesirable’ parts of oneself (addictions,
fear, obsessions, anger, etc). The relational arts allow people to add new ways of
thinking and acting to those they already possess. Their ‘old’ patterns remain,
but clients no longer feel compelled to follow them.
5. The nature of human change is that everyone ‘regresses’ temporarily while
under stress. Graduates of long term therapy do sometimes slip back into older,
dysfunctional patterns. However, these periods become shorter and shorter in
duration, and are more widely spaced apart.
6. Though long term therapy is often viewed as self-indulgent ‘navel gazing’, in fact
it naturally leads to clients developing more empathy for, and understanding
of, others. Those who have ‘graduated’ from a good long term therapeutic
relationship have more time for others and more energy for helping those less
fortunate than themselves. Instead of remaining ‘needy, demanding children’
they can reach out appropriately to others.

22. 43
4 Why doesn’t
it work for
everyone?

23. 44 45
Why doesn’t it work for everyone?
4.1 Counselling is not for everyone.
Many individuals would never seek counselling help. This is not necessarily because they are
‘healthier’ or ‘have fewer problems’. It is more a question of what they believe. If you believe
that it’s always up to you to solve your own problems, then you will be very reluctant to seek
professional help (or indeed, any help at all). Many men, and some women, believe that
seeking help is shameful or ‘weak’, and battle on, alone, for their entire lives. Such individuals
may have started life avoidantly attached (see 3.2 above). Some make a career out of helping
others (they may even train as counsellors, social workers or psychologists!) but refuse to seek
help for themselves when things get bad.
4.2 Complaining relieves tension.
Some people rely on complaining about their problems to friends, family members (or even
people sitting next to them on the bus), and the temporary relief they obtain seems enough
to keep them going, even though nothing changes. These people are not really asking to be
helped, although they may sound as if they are. They pour out their feelings, but have no
interest in exploring what they could do to improve matters. When challenged on this, such
clients will usually drop out of counselling.
4.3 People fear change.
Most of us would like to change some things about ourselves, yet simultaneously, fear that
change may be painful. Change might involve ‘losing’ something that is precious to us. So
it would be more accurate to say that while many clients resist change, part of them may
still want it. The counsellor’s job, then, is to help them give a voice to the part that wants to
change, while simultaneously respecting the part that fiercely resists the idea of thinking or
acting differently. No helping relationship will be effective unless the helper acknowledges
and accepts clients’ fear of change. That is why ‘positive affirmations’ rarely lead to lasting
change, although they may help some people in the short term.
4.4 ‘Why should I seek help? There’s nothing wrong with me!’
There are people who lack an inner voice that calls for change. These individuals see no
reason why they should be any different from who they are, and instead, demand that others
change for their benefit. Such people are professionally referred to as ‘personality disordered’.
They can function quite effectively in everyday life and some may hold down high-powered
jobs with apparent success. But they create distress in those who try to be close to them, and
seem to feel no remorse at the havoc they wreak. Mildly personality-disordered individuals
may be helped to modify their behaviour through expert (and extremely patient) counselling,
but those whose beliefs and patterns are more rigidly entrenched may blame the counsellor,
or the counselling process, for the fact that they continue to experience problems.
4.5 Self-knowledge can be alarming.
Although many people today view self-awareness as desirable, there are plenty of others who
would prefer not to know what drives them from within. Self-knowledge can be painful, and
there will always be individuals who find life more comfortable without it. Often, these are the
clients who focus on ‘fixing’ an immediate problem, and withdraw from counselling once they
are invited to look more deeply. Such clients are best suited to short-term work, emphasising
problem-solving and ‘coaching’ for limited behavioural change.
Movie director David Lynch (‘Lost Highway’, ‘Twin Peaks’) describes how he once
consulted a psychiatrist. ‘When I got into the room, I asked him “Do you think that
this process could, in any way, damage my creativity?” And he said, “Well David, I
have to be honest: it could.” And I shook his hand and left.’ (Catching the Big Fish,
Tarcher/Penguin, 2007: 61.)

24. 46 47
4.6 The timing must be right
Adults are most likely to benefit from counselling when they receive help at the right time
in their lives. What does this mean? First, it means that the client must have reached an age
where she or he is capable of self-reflection. For most people, this would be around the late
twenties to early thirties. Addicts in their twenties find it hard to believe that they cannot
simply continue to use their drug of choice without lasting damage to them; unhappily
partnered people cling to the belief that an exciting new relationship will bring them what they
need. Many of us reach middle age before we start to concede that life is not ‘fair’ and that
there may be nothing we can do about that. It is an advantage if clients have lived long enough
to see their own behaviour patterns and take an appropriate level of responsibility for their
difficulties.
As long as life continues to be relatively easy, few people will want to undertake self-
examination, or seek to change. Professional wisdom is that clients do best when they are in
‘moderate pain’—not so bad that they are overwhelmed by it; but bad enough to motivate
them to stay with the process long enough to see changes in themselves.

25. 48 49
5 What’s distinctive
about counselling
training?

26. 50 51
What’s distinctive about counselling training?
Over the past twenty or thirty years, counselling has gradually developed a profile as a stand-
alone discipline in this country, with training programs and selection criteria designed to
produce professionals who possess both the necessary personal qualities and the necessary
skills and knowledge to function ethically and effectively as counsellors and psychotherapists.
This final section describes that training, and explains how it differs from the training of
psychologists.
5.1 Psychology: a science in search of a clinical method?
The experimental method employed by psychology seeks to isolate particular variables from
complex ‘wholes’, yet such approaches too often yield findings that are not all that useful in
practice. Historically, it seems to me that psychology has been a ‘hard’ science in search of a
clinical method that would work with ‘soft’ subjects—human beings in distress.
Over the past century, mainstream clinical psychology espoused behaviourism (on the
assumption that humans could be systematically ‘trained’ much as animals are), and
subsequently, cognitive behaviourism (which acknowledges the role of mental processes, but
until recently regarded feelings as secondary to thoughts). More recently still, psychology has
begun to embrace Eastern-influenced mindfulness. All of these models work well for some
people, some of the time. However, they tend to minimise the significance of the client’s
social context (that is, their key relationships) in maintaining the client’s problems, and they
focus on to imparting knowledge and teaching strategies rather than on the therapeutic
relationship itself.
‘After four years of psychology, I reckon I knew most everything there was to know…
about rats’ [Clinical psychologist, reflecting on her training]
As a science, psychology has tended to favour methods that can be presented in manuals, so
that each practitioner is following the same procedures, and the effects of these standardised
procedures can be studied on large samples of clients. It is on the basis of such studies that
CBT, for example, has established its claim to be ‘evidence based’. Manualised treatments
minimise the role of ‘art’ (the practitioner’s instinct, based on experience and tempered
by self-knowledge) in favour of ‘science’. Manualised treatments are not well suited to the
complexities and sensitivities of individual human beings.
Psychology has adopted the traditional academic approach of teaching clinical practice only
after four years of ‘firm foundation’ in cognitive science. Generations of trainee psychologists
have complained that their undergraduate training seems unrelated to the task of working
with human beings and that when clinical training commences it fails to equip them
adequately for the complexities of working with their clients. The personal qualities of trainee
psychologists are not taken into account until postgraduate level, and even then, academic
rankings often count for more than relational capacities and self-knowledge when trainees are
accepted into clinical psychology programs. This policy privileges objective knowledge (the
priority of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex) over relational connection (the priority
of the right hemisphere).
Those psychologists who are serious about being good clinicians soon learn that they must
access training outside of psychology, and this is often training in the relational arts.
5.2 Counselling and Psychotherapy: relational arts in search of a
scientific foundation?
Freud’s psychoanalysis (from which psychotherapy and counselling developed) began with
clinical observations, and around these he and his followers built an increasingly complex
body of theory. For much of the past century, that theory was widely regarded as unproven and
even untestable. It is only in the last 30-odd years that an evidence base of direct relevance to
counselling has begun to emerge—in the form of attachment theory and recent neurological
understandings of brain evolution and brain functioning. This research confirms some of

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Neurological research has established differences between the two hemispheres
of the cerebral cortex that correspond broadly, though not exactly, with Freud’s
distinction between a ‘conscious mind’ (left hemisphere) and an ‘unconscious
mind’ (right hemisphere). In turn the different ‘world views’ of the two
hemispheres correspond to the ‘ego’ (rational, self-conscious and ‘objective’)
and the ‘id’ (instinct-driven, feeling-suffused and survival-oriented). See Iain
McGilchrist’s masterly summary of forty-odd years of research on the very different
way the two ‘halves’ of the brain perceive the world in The Master and his Emissary
(Yale University Press, 2009). These findings depend on ‘split brain experiments’
where the neuronal connections between the hemispheres are temporarily
anaesthetised, and scientists can communicate with each hemisphere ‘on its own’
and ask it to perform tasks that are normally performed co-operatively by the entire
cortex.
The corpus callosum, the band of neuronal tissue that connects the two
hemispheres and enables them to communicate information back and forth in
nano-seconds, does not develop until the end of the first year of life. This means
that an infant, in that crucial first year, is governed almost entirely by its right
hemisphere—that is, by its instincts, its feelings, and its sense of being ‘part of’ a
greater whole rather than a separate being. The maturation of the left hemisphere
takes many more years to reach completion.
I have argued (‘A Tale of Two Hemispheres’, Psychotherapy in Australia, 2012)
that psychology has been dominated by the concerns of the left hemisphere,
to the detriment of the concerns of the right. By the same token, counselling/
psychotherapy has been dominated by the concerns of the right hemisphere.
Maxims commonly employed by counsellors like ‘trust the process’ and ‘go
with your gut’ reflect this bias. Counsellors have often ignored hard evidence in
favour of what ‘feels right’, and have been suspicious of formal diagnosis, thereby
sometimes creating problems for themselves. To this extent, psychology’s critique
of counselling is not too wide of the mark. Counsellor training has, in the past,
lacked rigour, and has relied on a vague trust in the right of anyone who wants to be
a counsellor to become a trainee. See 5.3 below.
Freud’s central assumptions (though opening others to question).
Mainstream psychology has given rise to clinical interventions that are rational and easily
understood by the left hemisphere. Many amount to ‘systematic common sense’. Clinical
psychologists diagnose problems, and then formulate an appropriate ‘treatment’, in a model
that we all know from medicine. By contrast, counselling/psychotherapy works with the
whole person, and regards treatment as a process, a ‘journey’. Such assumptions have given
rise to clinical interventions that are harder to understand cognitively, and sometimes appear
contrary to common sense. These characteristics of counselling/psychotherapy reflect the
priorities of the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex, which does not separate ‘symptoms’
from the person in her relational context, and which forms judgements intuitively, rather than
through controlled experiments.
Obviously, effective work with human beings in distress should call on both science and
intuition, both feelings and cognition. Ideally, good counselling (whoever does it) should
balance the priorities of both hemispheres.
As it is, however, psychology and counselling/psychotherapy come at the task from different
ends of the spectrum. There is a place for both, but in longer-term work with challenging
clients, the relational and intuitive perspective of counselling/psychotherapy makes it the
approach of choice. Long term work necessarily becomes more of an ‘art’ than a science—
but an art that is informed by an ‘evidence base’ of its own—the evidence provided by
the counsellor’s continually accumulating knowledge of how her client reacts within the
therapeutic relationship, and with significant others outside of the counselling room.
For more on the implications of hemispherical differences for psychology and
counselling, see Hugh Crago, 2013. ‘An Immodest Proposal’ in Psychotherapy in
Australia 19, 3 (May): 66–67; Hugh Crago, 2013. ‘Psychotherapy: The View from
Psychology’ Psychotherapy in Australia 19, 4 (August): 68–71.

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5.3 Relationship first, problem-solving second
As we have seen, counselling is based on the assumption that challenging, long term clients
need a helping relationship before they can embrace a solution. It is the existence of a reliable
relationship with a trusted helper that makes it possible for people to discover for themselves
the kinds of advice they may earlier have heard or read about, but failed to ‘take on board’.
Many helping professionals are trained to provide their clients, right from the first session,
with information and strategies for coping better with their problems. Psychologists, in
particular, are associated with this stance, but it is common in many helping professionals,
particularly those with a medical background. It suits clients who seek a ‘quick fix’, but misses
the point with those who need a process that lasts longer and goes deeper.
By contrast, counsellors and psychotherapists are trained to listen to the client, not just at the
level of the problems they present, but at a deeper level (the issues and dynamics underlying
the problems clients present). From the first session, counsellors begin to build a relationship
tailored to that client’s individual needs, history, and way of relating. This process may need
to extend over many sessions before it becomes effective, and the relationship offered by the
counsellor needs to be strong enough and flexible enough to withstand challenges. Some
clients will try to turn the counsellor into a friend, others will remain wary and distrustful, still
others will become irritated or angry if the counsellor says the ‘wrong thing’. To cope with
this, counsellors must readjust their approach as necessary, and retain awareness that they
may be contributing to the client’s difficulties within the relationship (for example, by being
insufficiently encouraging, or by prematurely raising issues the client is not yet ready to face).
Trower, Jones, Dryden and Casey (2011) in Cognitive Behavioural Counselling in
Action (Sage) suggest that counsellors using CBT should allow a short period at
the start of the first session to gain rapport and establish a workable relationship.
After that (still in the first session) the counsellor is advised to ask diagnostic
questions, agree on what the problem is, and gain the client’s ‘informed consent’
to a suggested treatment for that problem. Any experienced professional would be
aware of how inadequate this time frame is, and how unlikely it is that most human
beings in distress would reveal the full extent of their difficulties in a few minutes at
the very beginning of the first session, to a professional they have never previously
met.
A psychologist is expected to be comfortable in the role of ‘expert’, one who leads and
structures the session—and many clients will be comfortable with that too, since it is the
way doctors, lawyers and other professionals typically behave. Counsellors are more likely
to see themselves as facilitating (making easier) the process of change, a process which will
gradually develop from within the client, not from the initiatives of the professional.
A counsellor’s role is somewhat similar to that of a midwife: it is the mother who gives birth,
not the professional; but the midwife’s role is to facilitate the birth, to anticipate and guard
against potential risks, and to support the woman, via her knowledge and experience of many
births, through the process.
Of course, counsellors will nevertheless take a leadership role with a new client if that is what
the client seems to need, and will provide ‘straightforward help’ (information and strategies
for change) if this is the client’s priority. If the client is unable to follow the advice, however,
counsellors will turn to a tactful exploration of what has ‘got in the way’—their ‘resistance’.
A sound counsellor training program must help students shift from ‘telling clients what to
do’ to an appreciation of ‘facilitation’. It is not easy for many new counsellors to sit with a
distressed client without rushing in to offer advice, or feeling that they ‘have to say something’.
This shift involves many trainees in self-questioning and heightened anxiety, which they must
learn to tolerate (see 5.4 below). Counselling training is not a rapid mastering of ‘easy’
techniques!
5.4 Relational interventions for maximum impact
Because counsellors regard the therapeutic relationship as central, it makes sense to them
that the relationship itself might sometimes need to be the subject of open discussion. In these
encounters, the counsellor may invite the client to share his or her doubts and criticisms of the
counsellor. In turn, the counsellor will (tentatively and respectfully) be honest with the client
(‘You talk very often about how you need to change, yet whenever we discuss particular steps
you might take towards a change, you seem to push them away, or you change the subject.
Seems like there’s something that’s difficult for you there, something you feel uncomfortable
about—could you help me to understand it?’)
Psychotherapy, and most long-term approaches to counselling, are based on the principle that
clients will experience within the helping relationship the same kinds of difficulties that they
have experienced with other key people in their lives. (This is Freud’s ‘transference’, in its
broadest sense.) Therapists draw their clients’ attention to this, making it possible for clients
to face the facts of their own dysfunctional behaviour within a relationship where they are less
likely to feel blamed, and simply ‘run away’ from this painful self-knowledge.

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Properly trained counsellors offer their clients a level of tactful honesty that is rare, or
completely absent, in ordinary conversation—even between intimates. The experience can
be a powerfully transformative one for many people. Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has probably
explained this better than anyone in his general-audience book The Gift of Therapy (Piatkus,
2001). Of course there is no reason why a psychologist should not adopt a similar approach—
the difference is simply that most psychologists have not been systematically trained to use the
therapeutic relationship in this way.
5.5 Counsellors are explicitly selected for relational skill and
self-awareness
Relational interventions require high levels of skill, judgement and sensitivity. Hence well-run
counsellor training programs aim to admit only applicants who already exhibit well-developed
relational skills and who possess some awareness of how their own behaviour affects others—
awareness which must grow rapidly in the course of their professional development. At the
time of writing, some training programs pay only lip service to this principle, and argue glibly
that students who lack these qualities will soon learn them, albeit facing a ‘steep learning
curve’. In twenty years’ experience as a trainer, I have had to conclude that this is rarely the
case. If we graduate students who lack key qualities, or exhibit them only patchily, we simply
collude with the belief that ‘anyone can be a counsellor’ and that counsellors are inherently
inferior to other helping professionals.
It is vital that counsellors know their own strengths and weaknesses before working with
clients, so that they can if necessary modify their typical behaviour patterns in order to make
things safer for their clients. Proper counselling training requires students to face up to the
aspects of their own personality that can get in the way of good client outcomes (such aspects
might include a strong need to ‘rescue’ people in distress, a need to feel ‘in control’ at all
times, or impatience at another person’s slowness to change).
Many, perhaps most, counsellors are attracted to their work as a result of painful or traumatic
experiences in their own background. They may not initially be aware of this motivation. While
such personal issues do not necessarily prevent their becoming effective counsellors, those
who practise the relational arts cannot afford to ‘use’ their clients in order to meet their own
needs for care, love or acknowledgement. They must learn to take their needs elsewhere—
initially to their professional supervision (see 5.6), and often, ultimately, to their own therapy.
Yes, but … Hey! I always said that counsellors can’t even cope with their own
problems! Who’d see a shrink who was crazier than his patients?
It is common for people to choose careers in nursing, teaching, medicine, or even
priesthood/ministry because their need to help or instruct others is an unconscious
substitute for dealing with their own problems. There is nothing unusual about
counsellors in this respect. In fact, being a ‘wounded healer’ can be a real advantage
in the counselling profession.
Many ‘wounded healers’ have reached adulthood with a well-developed sensitivity
to the feelings and needs of others. They can ‘read’ others accurately most of the
time, and respond with empathy and genuine interest. Often, though, these skills
are accompanied by a tendency to overlook their own needs, or to accept too
much responsibility for others’ problems. Counsellors must learn to see the ‘down
side’ as well as the ‘up’ side of their style of relating to others.
Effective counsellor training deliberately aims to make trainees aware of such
factors. Psychologists and social workers may well develop some self-awareness
during their training, but it is not usually an overt aim of those training programs,
and many graduate with inadequate self-knowledge, resulting in less competent
practice—and occasionally in unethical and damaging practice.

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5.6 Training in vulnerability and humility
It is not easy for anyone to talk about ‘personal stuff’ with a person they do not know,
especially when that ‘stuff’ is likely to be shameful or painful. To be effective, counsellors must
be sensitive to their clients’ pain and vulnerability, so that they do not expect too much of
their clients until they are ready to ‘go there’. When a counsellor hits a sore spot, their client
may react angrily or burst into tears. Having experienced their own vulnerability, in the role
of client helps counsellors to respond calmly and respectfully to such challenges. Hence it is
highly desirable for training programs to encourage counselling students to enter therapy for
themselves, or to participate in an experiential learning group that will make them more aware
of their own blind spots and habitual defences.
Above all, becoming successful at counselling requires humility. Although counselling may
seem to offer the trainee counsellor control over distressing situations, trainees soon discover
that this control is mostly illusory. It is not always possible to dissuade clients from doing
impulsive, risky things or making bad decisions. Try as we might, it is not always possible to
dissuade a vulnerable, desperate client from taking his or her own life. Being a professional
helper means that we must often live with our powerlessness—just as surgeons and physicians
must become desensitised to seeing their patients decline and die. But counsellors must retain
compassion even while they practise acceptance of the limitations of their
own role.
Good counsellors walk a tightrope over deep water. When clients talk about experiences
that remind the counsellor of painful episodes in his or her own life, the counsellor must
avoid getting lost in his/her own feelings. The ability to walk this line is something that most
counsellors only develop over time. It comes with constantly-increasing self-knowledge,
assisted by regular, expert supervision (see 5.6).
Paradoxically, the more counsellors know about themselves and their ‘unacceptable’ feelings,
the more accurately they will understand their clients and their ‘unacceptable’ feelings.
Developmentally, young children learn about themselves in parallel with learning about others.
They learn about their own feelings by observing those of others, they learn to articulate those
feelings by hearing others articulate theirs. A similar process operates in counselling, even
though it is adults who are involved.
5.7 Practice and theory must be simultaneously taught
In contrast to the standard academic paradigm of teaching theory before students embark on
any practical experience, appropriate counsellor training is founded on the realisation that in
our profession, most theory only makes complete sense when experienced in direct relation
to practice.
Hence trainee counsellors should begin practising the role of ‘self-aware listener’ from the
very beginning of their course, and should be asked to apply theoretical concepts to their
own experiences, both past and present. Trainees must gradually integrate their own style of
relating with relevant theory, in order to appreciate what a particular client may be needing
from them, and what the client’s behaviour actually means.
For example, a client may be bristly, demanding and ‘hard to reach’ in the initial session, or
couple of sessions. Such ‘prickly’ behaviour may well turn out to be the typical stance of
someone who has learned not to trust too easily, and who will relax once it is clear that the
counsellor remains interested and unfazed. Different individuals take different lengths of time
to feel safe enough to ‘open up’—and how safe they feel will depend, in part, on how flexible
their counsellor can be in responding to them.
Since counsellors’ most vital learnings are usually derived from direct clinical experience, or
from matching clinical experience to theory, it is important that this opportunity continue
once trainee counsellors have graduated and are employed. Hence the significant role
played by clinical supervision in the ongoing professional development of counsellors and
psychotherapists.
5.8 Competent supervision is vital
If you have been trained as an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor or a teacher, you will be expected
to operate independently and authoritatively at the end of your training, often without any
supervision from a more experienced professional. Of course you will be required to update
your knowledge of new evidence or new developments in your profession, but it is unlikely
anyone will ask how well you actually conduct yourself as a professional.

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To someone trained this way, a profession that demands regular ‘supervision’ for its members
may well seem questionable. How come counsellors need this ‘supervision’? Why aren’t they
knowledgeable enough and skilled enough to be able to operate on their own? Why don’t
they just pick it up as they go along, like the rest of us do? Is this ‘supervision’ just a big self-
indulgence?
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Counsellors are likely to be dealing (at least some of the time) with individuals whom others
find ‘difficult’or ‘high maintainance’. Counsellors must open themselves (emotionally as
well as intellectually) to clients’ anguish and confusion. They must repeatedly hear stories of
trauma, suffering and tragedy. They must also, at times, be prepared to be mistrusted or even
openly attacked (‘What textbook did you get that out of? How the hell would you know what
I’ve been through?) They must be able to ‘roll with the punches’ and exercise patience and
good humour, even when treated scornfully or dismissively, without giving up on their quest
to help their clients. And counsellors will inevitably be confronted with some clients whose
core problems resemble their own.
For all these reasons, regular supervision by a more experienced counsellor or therapist is
essential to the ethical and responsible practice of counselling, as well as to the counsellor’s
own well-being. Supervisors should have had many more years of practice experience than
those they are supervising, and are now also required to have undertaken formal coursework
in best-practice supervision.
In counselling, the counsellor builds a trusting relationship with a client, and the client
in turn is progressively able to own his own problems, and to face the painful parts of his
own experience. Similarly, in supervision, the supervisor builds a trusting relationship with
her supervisee. The supervisee in turn is able to be open and vulnerable, presenting those
cases where he feels stuck, or incompetent, and able to take in respectful feedback from the
supervisor.
In some instances, the supervisor may help the supervisee to be more aware of where a
client is ‘pushing his buttons’ or triggering feelings from the supervisee’s own past, and will
recommend that the supervisee explore those issues via personal therapy.
Good supervision should be based on mutual respect. It should not be something that
supervisees fear, or where they feel ‘judged’ and criticised. If such difficulties do arise,
supervisees should bring them to the attention of their supervisor, and they should be worked
through in open, honest discussion. In other words, the process of supervision ought to
parallel the process of good counselling.
5.9 Counselling and Psychology Revisited
We’ve seen how psychology and the relational arts approach the work of helping people from
very different perspectives, and with different priorities. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
In this booklet, I have emphasised the strengths of counselling/psychotherapy in comparison
with psychology, because in Australia, psychology’s view has dominated the debate—to the
point where some counsellors have started to think that in order to survive they must ‘do
what psychologists do’. The imbalance needs to be redressed.
My conviction is that psychology and counselling (like the brain’s left and right hemispheres!)
need to work together, and share their strengths instead of both claiming to be the ‘one true
way’ for addressing human problems.
Counselling needs to be more rigorous in its training programs—not only by requiring
students to master the research evidence underpinning the ‘relational arts’, but also by being
more selective in its approach to who should train as counsellors, and more hard-headed
about who should graduate. To have a ‘passion’ for helping others does not necessarily
mean that an applicant will make a competent counsellor, and not all who seek counselling
training are entitled to graduate unless they can clearly demonstrate the capacities required.
Counsellors have also begun to take more seriously the need to evaluate the effectiveness of
what they do (albeit in ways that fit with the relational emphasis of the profession).
In their text Psychotherapy: An Australian Perspective, four psychologists devote
considerable attention to trainee psychologists’ fears about being honest with
their supervisors, and quote a 2010 study indicating that 95% of supervisees told
their supervisor that they would ‘definitely recommend’ him/her to others, but
only 63% gave the same answer when they knew that what they said would not be
disclosed to their supervisor. (See O’Donovan, Casey, van der Veen and Boschen,
IP Communications, 2013.)
At the time of writing, once Australian psychologists have achieved registration
(which requires two years of regular supervision from appropriately qualified
psychologist supervisors), there is no mandatory requirement for supervision,
other than ten hours annually of ‘peer consultation’.

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For its part, psychology needs to acknowledge the importance of the therapeutic relationship
in any successful change-work, and to train its graduates properly in the interpersonal skills
necessary to manage that relationship. Ideally, graduates in psychology should complete a full
training in counselling before proceeding to work as clinical psychologists. Unfortunately, this
is unlikely to happen.
Most of all, we need to address the employment situation in which the vast majority of
positions involving counselling are presently tied to being a qualified psychologist or social
worker, and where counsellors (if they are employed at all) are paid at a much lower rate, as if
inherently inferior to their psychology and social work colleagues.
Governments at both federal and state levels need to recognise that the relational arts, in the
hands of well trained and skilled practitioners, offer a distinctive, effective way of working with
complex human problems, and that they have much to offer to colleagues from other helping
professions. In particular, proper training in counselling skills–rather than just short courses,
or no training at all–would immeasurably improve the effectiveness of many welfare workers,
support workers, youth workers, and drug/alcohol workers.
Many people still believe that ‘anyone can be a counsellor’ and that ‘all you have to do is hang
up your shingle and nobody can stop you’.
The fact is that in Australia counselling and psychotherapy have been self-regulating
professions–like psychology and social work–for years. They accredit courses, register
practitioners, maintain ethical standards, investigate complaints and require annual
professional development activities to be undertaken.
It is inappropriate and unjust for practitioners of the relational arts to be excluded from
consideration in so many public sector jobs. I hope that in some small way, the booklet you
have just read may prompt a rethink of this situation.

33. Counselling is a deeply personal matter, hard to describe in words,
and counsellors and psychotherapists have not been particularly good
advocates for their own profession. Most of them avoid speaking or
writing about their work for the general public. When they write for
other professionals they employ specialised language and assume
understandingsthatlayreadersmaynotpossess.Popularrepresentations
of counselling and psychotherapy in films and on TV are often misleading
in key respects. To date, counsellors have rarely spoken out publically to
correct these caricatures.
This booklet has been written for anyone who makes decisions about the
provision and funding of counselling services. It is intended for relevant
Ministers and shadow ministers (at both State and Federal levels), the
public servants who advise them, and the CEOs, Boards and Managers
of organisations that offer counselling and psychotherapy as part of a
range of welfare services. In particular, copies should go to all potential
supervisors of counselling or psychotherapy students on placement in
community agencies and organisations.
The author explains clearly what counsellors actually do, and how this
differs markedly from what the majority of psychologists do. He builds a
convincing case for the recognition of counselling and psychotherapy as
equal to, but different from, psychology.