Branding counselling psychologists!

Medics often brand themselves as illness specialists: we suffer because we’re ill; a bit of us is broken, we’ll fix that by cutting something off or adding a pill; if you’re lucky, you’ll be cured. I polarise, of course, and many medics such as Joanna Moncrieff and David Zigmond (see his blog post in the

Is it a word? It sounds like a word! The final stages of writing-up

I’m in the final stages of writing-up my thesis. More accurately, I’m swirling round the dark abyss that is thesis-prison. I’ve dropped so far down the rabbit-hole that I’ve turned to creative writing as a break from the research. It’s like doing anything too different would have disastrous consequences. I’d be coming up to the

“I’m a clinician, not a researcher!”

I hear this phrase a lot in my work as a research supervisor and director of studies.  Luckily, no-one’s (yet) been foolish enough to say it to me when I’ve been an examiner in a viva, but I’ve sensed it! It’s a badly-kept secrets that many counselling psychology trainees (and some clinical psychology trainees too,