In this issue
Features
E-therapy, equality and access (free article)
Catherine Jackson explores the benefits for clients of online and digital therapies.
When passion cools
Anne Power explains the factors underlying loss of desire within relationships.
A philosophy of wonder
Paul Gordon believes that all therapists should read Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
When the war is over
Sian Morgan reports on an international project to bring EMDR to war-torn peoples.
Insecurity of tenure
Liz Ballinger fears for the survival of counselling training in universities.
Strangers in a strange land
Counsellors need special skills to engage the unprepared client, argues Anne Crisp.
Regulars
In practice
Rachel Freeth: Meaning-making and medication
In the client's chair
Dawn Lang: A little community kindness
In training
Mel Perry: Resistance is futile
The researcher
Barry McInnes: Let the data do the talking
Talking point
JP Corrigan: Reaching out across the divides
How I became a therapist
Divine Charura
Questionnaire
Mike Shooter
Dilemmas
Placement supervision
The interview
Michael Jacobs: Past, present and future
BACP
From the chair
Amanda Hawkins: Our role in the criminal justice arena
Additional online content
In conversation
Colin Feltham interviews Liz Ballinger about the threats to the future of counselling courses in further and higher education.
Members and subscribers can download the pdf of this issue from the Therapy Today archive.
Editorial
I have just returned from BACP’s Evening with Yalom by video link, which was attended by nearly 1,000 BACP members. I confess that the prospect of having the great man beamed into a conference hall in London worried me a lot as I thought people might be terribly disappointed. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Somehow the giant screens and the technology via which we could interact with Yalom and his psychotherapist son Victor, while they sat looking relaxed at home in California, created an experience that for me was infinitely superior to the last time I was in one of Yalom’s large audiences in a London University lecture hall. Strangely the technology made it feel more direct, more authentic, more intimate even.
I would like to have asked Yalom what he thinks about online therapy, which we revisit in our news feature this month. I can’t imagine, with his emphasis on working in the here and now, that he would rate it very highly. I have never had online therapy myself but have the same instinctive suspicions as I do of online dating. I remember being told during my therapy training that over 80 per cent of communication is non-verbal. If this is true then surely online therapy would be seriously limiting? But, as the interviewees in our feature all agree, online is how most people communicate these days. Online therapy can reach people who would never access therapy in their whole lives; it is preferred by different age groups for its convenience and flexibility; it is cheap to deliver. And for many people it offers a more effective experience than face to face: some therapists are reporting that clients are able to ‘drill down to the issues that matter more quickly’ and are also more ready to ‘disclose personal information when they can’t actually see or be seen by their therapist’.
Wasn’t this why another famous therapist introduced the couch? He felt uncomfortable when his patients looked at him and believed that when no eye contact was made, patients felt freer to express themselves.
Sarah Browne
Editor