Nick Campion
Graduate: MSc Integrative Psychotherapy (2020)
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for: Early relational–developmental deficits and the search for repair through the erotic
Counselling & Psychotherapy Research (August 2023)
Background: This heuristic study explores the client’s experience of seeking to repair early relational deficits through their sexual practices, preferences, desires and relationships.
Aims: The aim of this study was to explore the hypothesis that a client’s sexual practices, preferences, desires, relationships and needs can offer a direct opportunity to understand their early relational deficits.
Methodology: This study uses heuristic enquiry, seeking to capture the essence of participants’ experiences. In-person, semistructured interviews were conducted with four participants, and transcripts were analysed according to Moustakis’ heuristic method.
Findings: The four research participants did seek repair in ways that aligned with the literature in terms of seeking a lost unity, searching for intimacy, to repair damage and resolve splits through the powerful contact of sex. The study demonstrates the irresistible power of the unconscious desire to address unmet needs and the destructive nature of the urgent search for intimacy—and suggests that although a repair through the erotic is sought, it is rarely found.
Read the article via this link: Nick Campion article
Tania Davis
Graduate: MSc Person-Centred & Experiential Psychotherapy (2020), publishing as Tatiana Davis.
Shared Visibilities: An exploration of the client’s use of imagery on the road to UPSR
European Journal of Qualitative Research in Psychotherapy (May 2023)
This article presents findings from research on the interaction between client imagery and Unconditional Positive Self-Regard (UPSR). Through posing the question “What impact does imagery shared within the therapeutic relationship have on UPSR?”, the researcher-herself a person-centred therapist-explores issues emerging from her own experience of the use of imagery language in therapy, both as client and therapist. The research also addresses a lacuna within the literature of person-centred therapy, where little has been written on the potential use of shared language and clients’ choice of imagery. Data from semi-structured interviews with four women trainee person-centred therapists about their experience of using imagery was analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The imagery participants used in their own therapy ranged from physical images drawn by them, to images from dreams or inspired by prayer, reflections on the natural world, and visualisations of the self in different imagined contexts. The discussion suggests that client UPSR is indeed impacted by imagery used in the therapeutic relationship, and that the ability of the client to use their own language in therapy to mediate their experience has a positive impact on the therapeutic relationship. This research contributes a new area of thinking to person-centred work, exploring the role of client language in client-led work, and the benefits for therapists of working with and through the images of their clients.
Read the article via this link: Shared Visibilities article
Dr Gillie Jenkinson
Graduate: MA in Gestalt Psychotherapy (2005)
Walking Free from the Trauma of Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse:
A Workbook for Recovery and Growth, Routledge (2023)
This book provides a comprehensive guide to recovery, based on a tested model of post-cult counselling, and years of research and clinical experience. It is designed to help survivors of diverse abusive settings, including religious and spiritual, political, gangs, business, therapy and wellness and one-on-one relationships. The reader follows a beautifully illustrated journey through four Phases of recovery and growth, one Milestone at a time, to make sense of what has happened to them, learn how to walk free from psychological control and find resources for healing. Gillie includes stories from her own experience, detailing her path towards recovery and how she learned to come to terms with and overcome what happened to her.
Reviews for the book can be found here:
Katy Lees
Graduate: MSc Person-Centred & Experiential Psychotherapy (2012)
The Trans Guide to Mental Health and Wellbeing
Jessica Kingsley Books (2022)
This empowering self-help guide provides advice and strategies for trans and/or non-binary people on a range of common mental health issues including anxiety, depression, body image, trauma, suicidal thoughts and dissociation. It provides advice on neutralising negative thoughts, coping with transphobia, coming out, dealing with imposter syndrome, and implementing achievable self-care strategies and mindfulness techniques.
Whether you are in a crisis or just looking for ways to improve your life, this reassuring guide is there for you to use in the way that helps you the most, regardless of where you are in your transition, or if you decide not to transition in conventional ways. Combining therapeutic expertise alongside first-hand experience, the book also highlights the importance of understanding and being proud of who you are, to help you live life to the fullest.
Deborah A. Lee
Graduate: MSc Person-Centred & Experiential Psychotherapy (2014)
Step In To Study Counselling And Psychotherapy (4th Edition)
Written with Pete Sanders. PCCS Books (2022)
This fourth, updated and revised edition of this bestselling classic offers essential guidance to student counsellors and psychotherapists starting out on their training. Most books about training focus on the training; this book is about you, the trainee and student, and your needs. Written by two highly experienced trainers/lecturers, Step in to Study Counselling and Psychotherapy will be your friend and guide across this new terrain. An array of voices from the world of counselling and psychotherapy training also contribute their expertise on the topics discussed. Training in counselling and psychotherapy demands much of the trainee in terms of what you give of yourself to the process, as well as the academic and practice skills required to successfully complete the course. This book will help you choose your course and where to study, fund it, manage your relationships with fellow trainees and teaching staff, prepare for and write/deliver your assignments, negotiate placements and follow your learning through into continuing professional development. It also covers clinical supervision, personal therapy, experiential learning and self-care, and – as a one-stop resource – it provides useful links to other sources of information and support.
#MeToo – Counsellors And Psychotherapists Speak About Sexual Violence And Abuse
Edited By Deborah A. Lee and Emma Palmer, (2022) Routledge, New York
“In 2017 the global #MeToo movement burst through the conspiracy of silence around women’s experience of sexual abuse and violence. Since then, other groups have found the courage to declare that they too have experienced sexual abuse and are unafraid and unashamed to let it be known. Now this ground-breaking book provides a space where counsellors and psychotherapists – more often the listeners to such stories – can tell their own stories, sometimes for the first time.
Each chapter is written by a counsellor, psychotherapist or therapy client, and followed up with a dialogue between writer and peer. Together they form a community of #TherapistsToo voices, brought together in the hope that readers both within and beyond the counselling and psychotherapy realm will feel less alone and more connected. This is a book for anyone wanting to understand the ubiquity of sexual violence and sexual abuse and how to respond, support, raise awareness, campaign and be part of creating a culture which says #TimesUp.”
Joanna Petersfield*
Memoir by a graduate of SPTI
(2022) Austin Macauley Publishers
Not what the good fairy promised
Twenty-four year old Joanna’s life flipped upside down at the taking of a phone call. News of her sister’s near-death in a fire triggered the onset of Bipolar Disorder, a mental health condition that Joanna would have to manage for the rest of her life.
A Scholarship to Cambridge, with three years to get her degree, had ended in this. Joanna’s high hopes, and her father’s fierce ambitions for her, now lay in tatters. A glowing future of any description lay beyond her grasp as she struggled to get to grips with her new and utterly foreign reality. Where was she going in life now?
Not What the Good Fairy Promised is the heart-warming story of a young woman’s experience of terrifying breakdown, psychiatric hospital, and the stigma of mental illness. There is the battle with everyday life, with its frightening demand that she re-discover her identity – her selfhood – while struggling to survive and earn a living. While longing to fulfil the yearning for something worthwhile to fill the hours of nine to five. This is a tale of the experience, and overcoming, of serious mental illness. Of driving ahead to forge a new and unlooked for adventure. What will the Good Fairy have to offer now?
Jayne Pigford
Graduate: MSc in Gestalt Psychotherapy (2003)
Rocking with the Reaper: An Unplanned Journey into Mindfulness
With poems by Aurthur Downs.
Are we moulded by our genes or experiences?
What makes us think and behave in the ways we do?
Is ‘the way it is’ inevitable or could we create a better world?
Jayne Pigford invites us to join her in an exploration of the human condition; do we, as she experienced on her death-bed, have a loving, peaceful core? Sharing her personal experience of severe illness, close dances with death, childlessness, a repeatedly broken heart and her professional learning from attachment theory, positive psychology and neuroscience, Jayne reveals how we’re ‘wired to connect’ and act kindly.
Amidst the world’s current chaos, with the arrival of the Coronavirus at the end of the book, Jayne argues that connection is our way through to a better place; connection to ourselves, our miraculous world and each other. Ultimately this book gives us hope for humanity and through Jayne’s own brand of humour, makes a friend of dastardly Death along the way!
Little Frog and the Secret Magic: A Journey into Mindfulness
(2022) Goldcrest Books International Ltd
Written by a psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher, Little frog and the Secret Magic’ is a comprehensive introduction to mindfulness for children (and adults!)
It tells the story of Little Frog’s secret expedition to the big oak tree and the characters he meets along the way.
Also included in the book are lots of fun exercises to help children feel, understand, discuss and manage challenging emotions and behaviours.
This book is a gift in self-awareness and may well enhance wellbeing and happiness!
