d at coping with adversity. You should be able to demonstrate, not that your life is perfect, but that you can cope with the problems you encounter personally. Second you should be self aware, know your own strengths and weaknesses, do not be afraid to show yourself as vulnerable sometimes. After all a good counsellor is human too. It is advocated that new counsellors should have personal therapy for several hours each month plus examine the effect clients have on them personally. Look for cases of transference and counter-transference in relationships. (This is the common situation of falling in lovCould less be better? In a world short of counsellors should we really be waiting four years to qualify as a therapist? Most disciplines whether psychoanalytical, Jungian, CBT, transactional analysis and many others insist on years of training to become a competent counsellor. I would like to challenge this and some basic assumptions about therapy itself.

Why the length of time? Well a flippant answer could simply be money. A lot of organisations and personal trainers make a living out of training counsellors. The length of time and the commitment needed by a student can provide a steady income for a long time from relatively few trainees. Most overview organisations insist on so many hours of training, client contact, supervision and conference attendance. If you can afford to pay out for all these things you can become a counsellor. No wonder many noted psychologist’s start their own theory based counselling and start a new trend. You can break away from the original system and start your own little cult of therapy. However the secret to making money is to have the training last as long as possible and have your own pet organisation set examinations by your so-called peers to say whether you have passed their tests (or spent enough money doing so).

The current trend is about four years on average; some such as psychodynamic traditional therapy can be many years of training. It is true you can earn money yourself while training by seeing clients and practising your art. This in turn leads to the lucrative practice of supervision which is the most insidious practice of money laundering. (See separate paper on Supervision). It is considered then appropriate to spend this huge length of time learning your trade. When organisations are challenged about this they simply defend the practice by saying we are protecting the public from bad counselling. This in itself is a joke – the worst counsellors I have met had years of training – being a good counsellor or therapist is about personality not training.

What makes a good counsellor (therapist)? This question is of course multifaceted, but let’s for the sake of argument keep it simple, as simple is always best. First you need to have a stable personality yourself. This does not mean you are a boring person who sits back and listens to endless clients tell you of their misfortunes. It means in your own life you should be good at coping with adversity. You should be able to demonstrate, not that your life is perfect, but that you can cope with the problems you encounter personally. Second you should be self aware, know your own strengths and weaknesses, do not be afraid to show yourself as vulnerable sometimes. After all a good counsellor is human too. It is advocated that new counsellors should have personal therapy for several hours each month plus examine the effect clients have on them personally. Look for cases of transference and counter-transference in relationships. (This is the common situation of falling in love

me for a long time from relatively few trainees. Most overview organisations insist on so many hours of training, client contact, supervision and conference attendance. If you can afford to pay out for all these things you can become a counsellor. No wonder many noted psychologist’s start their own theory based counselling and start a new trend. You can break away from the original system and start your own little cult of therapy. However the secret to making money is to have the training last as long as possible and have your own pet organisation set examinations by your so-called peers to say whether you have passed their tests (or spent enough money doing so).

The current trend is about four years on average; some such as psychodynamic traditional therapy can be many years of training. It is true you can earn money yourself while training by seeing clients and practising your art. This in turn leads to the lucrative practice of supervision which is the most insidious practice of money laundering. (See separate paper on Supervision). It is considered then appropriate to spend this huge length of time learning your trade. When organisations are challenged about this they simply defend the practice by saying we are protecting the public from bad counselling. This in itself is a joke – the worst counsellors I have met had years of training – being a good counsellor or therapist is about personality not training.

What makes a good counsellor (therapist)? This question is of course multifaceted, but let’s for the sake of argument keep it simple, as simple is always best. First you need to have a stable personality yourself. This does not mean you are a boring person who sits back and listens to endless clients tell you of their misfortunes. It means in your own life you should be good at coping with adversity. You should be able to demonstrate, not that your life is perfect, but that you can cope with the problems you encounter personally. Second you should be self aware, know your own strengths and weaknesses, do not be afraid to show yourself as vulnerable sometimes. After all a good counsellor is human too. It is advocated that new counsellors should have personal therapy for several hours each month plus examine the effect clients have on them personally. Look for cases of transference and counter-transference in relationships. (This is the common situation of falling in lov

r you have passed their tests (or spent enough money doing so).

The current trend is about four years on average; some such as psychodynamic traditional therapy can be many years of training. It is true you can earn money yourself while training by seeing clients and practising your art. This in turn leads to the lucrative practice of supervision which is the most insidious practice of money laundering. (See separate paper on Supervision). It is considered then appropriate to spend this huge length of time learning your trade. When organisations are challenged about this they simply defend the practice by saying we are protecting the public from bad counselling. This in itself is a joke – the worst counsellors I have met had years of training – being a good counsellor or therapist is about personality not training.

What makes a good counsellor (therapist)? This question is of course multifaceted, but let’s for the sake of argument keep it simple, as simple is always best. First you need to have a stable personality yourself. This does not mean you are a boring person who sits back and listens to endless clients tell you of their misfortunes. It means in your own life you should be good at coping with adversity. You should be able to demonstrate, not that your life is perfect, but that you can cope with the problems you encounter personally. Second you should be self aware, know your own strengths and weaknesses, do not be afraid to show yourself as vulnerable sometimes. After all a good counsellor is human too. It is advocated that new counsellors should have personal therapy for several hours each month plus examine the effect clients have on them personally. Look for cases of transference and counter-transference in relationships. (This is the common situation of falling in lov

ractice by saying we are protecting the public from bad counselling. This in itself is a joke – the worst counsellors I have met had years of training – being a good counsellor or therapist is about personality not training.

What makes a good counsellor (therapist)? This question is of course multifaceted, but let’s for the sake of argument keep it simple, as simple is always best. First you need to have a stable personality yourself. This does not mean you are a boring person who sits back and listens to endless clients tell you of their misfortunes. It means in your own life you should be good at coping with adversity. You should be able to demonstrate, not that your life is perfect, but that you can cope with the problems you encounter personally. Second you should be self aware, know your own strengths and weaknesses, do not be afraid to show yourself as vulnerable sometimes. After all a good counsellor is human too. It is advocated that new counsellors should have personal therapy for several hours each month plus examine the effect clients have on them personally. Look for cases of transference and counter-transference in relationships. (This is the common situation of falling in lov

d at coping with adversity. You should be able to demonstrate, not that your life is perfect, but that you can cope with the problems you encounter personally. Second you should be self aware, know your own strengths and weaknesses, do not be afraid to show yourself as vulnerable sometimes. After all a good counsellor is human too. It is advocated that new counsellors should have personal therapy for several hours each month plus examine the effect clients have on them personally. Look for cases of transference and counter-transference in relationships. (This is the common situation of falling in love with the client or visa-versa.) Also in personal therapy you are encouraged to explore your inner self and your own life. This can be very counter-productive to the new counsellors own well-being. So I will make this bold statement clearly so all who read this understand:

“Personal therapy when you do not need it can damage your mental life!”

I make that statement as I say boldly, against all the trends out there that feel you should have your own breakdown in order to rebuild you into a thinking, emotional, empathetic counsellor. I only have one comment on that proposal – rubbish. Counselling is like any other job you can do it without thinking so hard about your own life. It is ironic that in any other job we tell people to keep their personal demons at home where they belong. If on the other hand you have personal issues of such magnitude that you need to see a counsellor yourself then maybe you are not right for becoming a counsellor in the first place. I am not a believer that the best person to understand a junky is a reformed junky. That is the modern joke on our society that we employ the ex-unstable to help the present un-stable. I am not saying these people are not sincere in their effort to help those like themselves but most are really indulging in self-righteousness of the most insidious kind. The point I am really making here is time again. It is another time consuming exercise that for most is unnecessary to do the work. It takes a long time to build up personal therapy hours in order to show you are stable and ready to treat others. This in itself is contradictory in that just because someone has resolved their own issues somehow they are able to then have some insight into other people’s lives. It is like the unmarried Catholic priest advising on marriage when they do not marry themselves, you do not need to talk from personal experience to understand another’s point of view. Many Catholic priests do a very good job of counselling the faithful. I personally may not agree with the doctrine but if you have faith in God then that is the route to your salvation in mental health. I have no problem with that approach. However in the modern God-less world the therapist is often cast into the new priest of the high alter of therapy and theory.

Time: I started this paper with the preposition that counsellor training is taking too long. I cannot just criticise t