Personal and Professional Development for Counsellors

Paul Wilkins

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9781446234006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

`A helpful guide for newly qualified counsellors. It gives some comprehensive ideas and tips for further development... a useful book? - Self & Society

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What is Personal and Professional Development?

The commitment to personal and professional development is widespread in the world of counselling and psychotherapy. It is common to hear therapists of all kinds saying something like: ‘You can only take a client as far as you have gone yourself.’ Implicit in this statement is the belief that the development of the client is in some way limited by the development of the counsellor. Aveline puts it thus: ‘What therapists can bear to hear in themselves, they can hear in their patients. What therapists can find in themselves, they can recognise in others’ (Aveline, 1990: 333).

What isn’t clear from such statements is to what reference is being made. Perhaps in the mind of many counsellors, the achievements are in terms of psychological insights and the reduction of emotional disturbance. It is true that a therapist with little self-awareness and who is emotionally ill-adjusted is unlikely to be effective with clients but perhaps other learning and insights are valuable to the client in the therapeutic encounter. It may be that we owe it to our clients to develop as human beings in some comprehensive way. Perhaps the extent to which we can facilitate the development of our clients is limited not only by our emotional development but (for instance) our cognitive, philosophical and ethical development. Personal and professional development may be about becoming a more complete practitioner but is also about becoming a fuller, more rounded person. Counsellors who belong to a professional organisation are professionally and ethically obliged to address their own growth and education in order to be better able to facilitate the growth of their clients. It could be argued that joining an appropriate professional association and/or engaging with peers in some other way is itself a stage in professional development. Increasingly there is an expectation that counsellors and other therapists will be members of such organisations and so offer their clients the protection this affords. Perhaps it is hard to conceive of a counsellor who practises outside this framework as working effectively or ethically.

Professional organisations recognise this obligation and include it in their codes of ethics and practice. Writing about continuing professional development (CPD) with respect to counselling psychology, James (1995a: 7) stated that ‘CPD is a necessary component to being both an applied psychologist (Chartered Psychologist) and a Counselling Psychologist.’

Books on counselling and psychotherapy often make reference to the obligation for professional and personal development. Rowan (1976) writes of the responsibility of therapists to constantly address their own material (by which he means unresolved emotional issues and emotional reactions to the client) and Rogers entitled one of his principal works (in which he writes of his growth as a practitioner and as a human being) On Becoming a Person (Rogers, 1961). Palmer (1991) writing as managing editor of the BAC journal Counselling, compares ‘continuing professional education’ with supervision. He writes that not only do counsellors benefit from professional development but that clients may also benefit in the long run. Palmer regards continuing development and supervision as intrinsically linked and essential to good practice.

The notion that personal and professional development are vital to the proper functioning of a counsellor dates from the very earliest days of the profession. Freud was very clear that personal analysis was a necessary prerequisite for anyone wishing to become a psychoanalyst. In many approaches to therapy, this remains an essential principle. Many programmes of training require students to engage in personal therapy, usually with a therapist of the same orientation as that aspired to by the trainee. Even those programmes for which this is not a requirement (perhaps because of an awareness that counselling is essentially a consensual relationship between client and counsellor and that any hint of ‘compulsion’ is therefore contradictory) generally recommend that students engage in therapy. And, in my experience, personal therapy does seem to make a difference to the effectiveness of the trainee counsellor. As a counselling tutor, I have noticed repeatedly that my most successful students tend to be those who take constructive steps to address their personal issues and who have most practice with ‘real’ clients. It is as if these two elements (which I think correspond to elements of personal and professional development respectively) do more for the development of counsellors than any amount of class contact. I think that what is true for the trainee is just as true for the experienced and established practitioner – the amount of personal work we do and the amount of practice we get are primary factors in determining our effectiveness. It is equally true that, in some approaches to therapy (for instance the cognitive-behavioural approaches) personal therapy is seen as less important and so legitimately figures less in the developmental plans of the practitioners of these approaches. Additionally, it is important to realise that not all personal therapy is experienced as useful. There is research evidence to show that, sometimes, trainees have had unsatisfactory experiences of personal therapy. McLeod (1993: 198, 210–211) briefly reviews the evidence for the effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) of personal therapy in the development of the trainee counsellor. He considers that there are ‘reasons to expect personal therapy to be associated with greater counsellor competence, but also reasons to expect the reverse’, and cites a number of research studies supporting one or other view. The whole area of personal therapy is explored more fully in Chapter 4.

It seems clear, therefore, that the importance of personal and professional development is widely recognised but what exactly is meant by these terms? Though codes of ethics and practice make reference to the necessity of these elements, they do not currently offer clear guidance as to what constitutes either professional development or personal development. It remains for individual practitioners to decide for themselves what these may be and then to set about discovering ways to meet the requirements of their professional bodies and to satisfy their personal needs. This is reasonable (each of us is unique, and our ways of growing and learning are different) but it is confusing. The commitment individual counsellors have to continuing professional development varies considerably. Some spend a great deal of time and money attending international conferences and others are offered the support of their employers. Some counsellors, for one reason or another, give professional development a low priority. Perhaps they are unsure of its importance, don’t know how to go about the process or feel they can’t afford the time, money and energy it takes. The purpose of this book is to enable practitioners to reach some personal understanding of their developmental needs and to suggest a programme through which these needs may be met and which is appropriate to their means.

Definitions

As in the title of this book, personal and professional development are usually bracketed together. This immediately raises the question – to what extent are they separate and to what extent are they indivisible? Perhaps there is no clear separation. From one perspective (that of therapists emphasising relationship above technique) counselling and other forms of therapy are most effective when the process involves a meeting of the real self of the therapist with the real self of the client. Satir (1987) states this most eloquently when she writes:

Therapy is a deeply intimate state and vulnerable experience, requiring sensitivity to one’s own state of being as well as to that of the other. It is a meeting of the deepest self of the therapist with the deepest self of the patient or client.

It is only when we pay attention to our own development that this ‘intimate’ state becomes possible for it is only then that we may fully appreciate its necessity and be confident that we may safely enter into it without losing ourselves. Only the personally strong can easily enter the vulnerable state of which Satir writes. The extent to which we can be vulnerable, open, aware of ourselves and the other is a product of our personal and professional development.

Alan Frankland, chair of the British Association for Counselling (BAC) individual accreditation group (personal communication, 1995) wrote: ‘I take the view that in the context of counselling these [professional and personal development] are almost interchangeable since the professional work of a counsellor involves the use of self at all times’, and, writing about the BAC scheme for individual accreditation (Frankland, 1995: 58):

Since BAC adheres to a broad model of counselling and therapy which places the person and personal relationships at the heart of our work, there is no problem in subsuming personal development under professional development (and to some degree vice versa).

This reinforces the view that it may be fruitless to separate professional and personal development for the former is inextricably linked with our development as persons. This recognition seems to be international.

Smaroula Pandelis, a Greek therapist, wrote of her experience of attending a training conference (Pandelis, 1995: 9). At the start of this conference, she was issued with ‘ethical guidelines for conference delegates’ and she was struck by the statement that the primary aim of the conference is training and education, not therapy. Pandelis writes of the contradiction she perceived in this for, though she was fully aware that she wasn’t at the conference to deal with her personal issues, at the same time ‘on another dimension’ she was there to work on her personal issues. She writes: ‘I believe that my professional issues and my philosophical issues are my personal issues’ (my emphasis).

Pandelis voices the contradiction or paradox that we face as counsellors when we try to determine our needs for personal development and our needs for professional development. They are indeed linked, mutually dependent and perhaps it is impossible to separate them. I am certain that, if they can be separated at all, the boundary is hazy and shifts with the moment. Perhaps rather than attempt to define them as two separate entities, the most useful approach is to view the continuing development of a counsellor as comprising a spectrum of elements. One end of the spectrum may be easier to define in terms of professional needs, the other as personal needs. As Skovholt and Ronnestad (1995: 1) report: ‘the field has increasingly come to realise the intertwining of the personal and professional aspects of the functioning of the therapist/counsellor’.

The issue of continuing development is further complicated because both professional development needs and personal development needs change with time and experience and they are perceived differently by therapists of different orientations. It is likely that the needs of a beginning therapist and a practitioner of many years’ standing will be quite different. Skovholt and Ronnestad (1995) describe an eight-stage model of the evolving professional self of counsellors and therapists. On the basis that the boundary between the two may be somewhat fluid and that the most appropriate forms of professional and personal development change as therapists ‘mature’, I can offer definitions which I think are useful.

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Box 1.1 Professional development includes:

• the updating of skills and knowledge by (for instance):
  – attending conferences
  – reading relevant journals
• formal training (including postgraduate work and specialist courses)
• developing a stance of ‘reflective practitioner’, that is of learning from experience
• engaging in the process of research

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Professional development

The professional development of counsellors is that area which addresses the extension of skills and knowledge (see Box 1.1). It is the furtherance of ability as practitioner through (for instance) further training, professional updating and study of any kind. To meet this need, counsellors have a variety of means. Most professional organisations combine their AGM with a ‘training conference’ which offers not only keynote speakers addressing an issue of the moment but a variety of workshops from which an individual therapist may choose the most appropriate. Journals addressing the whole area of counselling and psychotherapy abound and offer the thoughts and conclusions not only of academics and practitioners but sometimes of students and clients too! Books on counselling continue to proliferate and offer insight into working with particular types of client, explanations of an approach to counselling in practice and the relevance of more general issues such as ethics, the law or the importance of cross-cultural issues.

The updating of skills and knowledge about counselling should be considered a professional obligation. Ideas and practices about how to work with particular clients, the role and nature of supervision and the effectiveness of particular techniques are constantly being revised. Classical approaches are increasingly being re-examined and re-developed and new techniques and strategies are emerging from research and experience. There is more and greater expertise across the whole field of counselling now than there ever has been. It is incumbent upon the conscientious practitioner to be informed of and take note of these changes even if they are not incorporated into practice. The journals and the events organised by the professional bodies provide an excellent way of keeping abreast of new ideas and changes in practice.

Formal training also provides an opportunity for professional development. There is a growing number of post-qualifying courses offering counsellors and other therapists the opportunity to study for a master’s degree as well as a plethora of ‘specialist’ training. As well as traditional counselling courses perhaps with a psychodynamic, person centred or integrative orientation, there now exists the opportunity to train in psychosynthesis, multimodal therapy, cognitive analytic therapy, primal integration therapy, an abundance of creative approaches to therapy (such as art therapy, dance movement therapy or psychodrama) and a wealth of other approaches. There are also opportunities to extend professional skills beyond the field of client work through training as a supervisor.

Professional development though is not only about ‘learning’ in the sense of formal training and the study of somebody else’s thought. It is also about reflection and discovery. I wrote above about how I had noticed that the amount of practice my students had affected their development as counsellors. This is because it is only as we work with clients that we understand more of our abilities and the relevance of our learning to practice. One way we develop as practitioners is to reflect upon our work and upon our clients. This reflection may take place in the formal setting of supervision, while making notes about the counselling session or as the result of listening to tapes of the counselling interaction but it is just as likely to happen in a less formal way. My personal favourites are musing in a warm bath or on a country walk. But it isn’t where this reflection takes place that is important, simply that it does.

Discovery too is important to professional development. I often think that the whole proc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 What is Personal and Professional Development?
• 2 Further Training
• 3 Professional Recognition: Accreditation and Re-Accreditation with Alan Frankland
• 4 Personal Therapy
• 5 Supervision
• 6 Contributing to the Furtherance of Knowledge
• 7 Resourcing Your Self
• 8 Determining a Personal Programme for Personal and Professional Development
• Appendix: Personal and Professional Development on a Budget
• References
• Index