Orleans, V. & Scoyoc, S. (2009). A Short Introduction to Counselling Psychology. London: SAGE. Kapitel 1-6
Present debates and challenges:
– Legal regulation of the profession: some people are against a legal regulation of the profession and others are for counselling psychologist to be an expertise that protects the public against untrained therapists. The problem of professional activities as areas with risk and the relation between competence and effectiveness (Pilgrim 2005). Some things indicate that the title practitioner psychologist will be protected by state registration.
– Professional identities: an areas of concern is the possibility for counselling psychology to be a separate profession with central aspects in philosophy and practice within the humanistic approach. With the heightening work of counselling psychologists in the NHS, demands of knowledge about diagnoses and psychotropic drugs have made changes in the curriculum of counselling psychology. This makes the profession of counselling psychology less separate. In addition counselling psychology’s focus on subjectivity and intersubjectivity makes counselling psychology more close than far from clinical psychological practice and psychotherapy. However counselling psychology and psychotherapy does have a different background.
– The political arena and training considerations: economically studies have shown that CBT has the greatest effect and this practice therefore gets at greater support financially. There have been a movement against the golden standard for testing approaches within the medical model. Counselling psychologists who works within a humanistic approach must be better at representing their effects.
In relation to training a suggestion has been made that different approaches within applied psychology should not be distinguish but applied psychology must be trained without specification.
Core problems in theory, practice and research: it is a challenge to create a more coherent integration of theory, practice and research. It is difficult for students to transfer their theory to their practical work. In addition a bigger focus must be set on cross-cultural therapy and the relation between the inner and outer of a person.
PsykNoter 