In this issue
Here and now
News feature: Strictly therapy? (free article)
Sally Brown explores the growing phenomenon of broadcast therapy
The big issues
Making connections in groups
Nick Barwick finds echoes of the wider political context in group-analytic psychotherapy
What’s the harm?
For our young clients, self-harm is a way of coping, writes Jeanine Connor
What do you want to change?
Mick Cooper and Duncan Law set out the benefits of goal-oriented practice
Making the Ethical Framework work for you
Tim Bond explains further changes to the BACP Ethical Framework
Regulars
Turning point
Wisdom from experience
Research matters
John McLeod introduces his top picks from the journals
Dilemmas
Uri’s client is dating his former partner
Talking point
How do you start sessions?
Self-care
Mig Bennett finds and loses herself in tennis
Analyse me
Ernesto Spinelli answers our questionnaire
Your association
A pdf of this issue is available in the Therapy Today archive
Editor's note
Incredibly (to me, anyway), it’s been a year since we relaunched Therapy Today. Our aim then, as I said in my first Editor’s note, was ‘to build on all that was good and highly valued about the journal... its balance of practice, research, politics and debate’, and to ‘lighten and brighten it a bit’.
We had a lot of feedback in the early months – positive and negative – and we’ve tweaked a few details over the year, including reintroducing the much-valued book reviews, but we have broadly maintained the direction we set.
So, 12 months on, it’s time to ask you how we’ve done. I’ve had the full range of responses from people I’ve met out and about – understandably, there was a bit of caution initially, but now I hear mostly, ‘I read it cover to cover’. Please complete the reader survey we’re running this month. You can find it online at bit.ly/TherapyTodaySurvey. We’d love to know in detail what you think (and there’s the chance to win £100 in book tokens).
Thank you all, whether you simply read, reflect on and enjoy the magazine, or contribute articles, opinions and ideas yourself. Therapy Today should speak for and to its readers. Your letters certainly suggest you are engaging with the content – keep them coming.
And there’s an important change – your copy of Therapy Today will, from this issue, arrive at the start of the month. It’s always been an anomaly that the magazine drifts through your letterboxes sometime mid-month. This means we can be more timely in our coverage of topical issues, and makes it easier to co-ordinate with events.
Catherine Jackson
Editor
I always take a special interest when therapy is represented in the media in some way.
I observe the sessions very closely, from what’s in the room to what the therapist wears, and everything that is said – and isn’t said – and I ask myself if I would work the same way. Fictional therapy can provide wonderful CPD if it’s done well.
However, when the client is a real client, talking about their real-life issues and the whole world can listen in, I get twitchy. Broadcast therapy is a fantastic opportunity for the public to see what really happens in therapy sessions and helps to
normalise what we do. However, for the client, the repercussions are potentially problematic; inevitably, they waive some of the boundaries that would normally protect them and I worry about where the media are going with it. Our news feature this month offers some interesting perspectives from therapists doing this work, and others who have turned it down. What’s your view?
Rachel Shattock Dawson
Consultant Editor