Counselling Psychology In Aotearoa/New Zealand– What Is

Counselling Psychology in Aotearoa/New Zealandthe challenge of their title. To furthercomplement the handbook, Robert Borand colleagues (Bor & Watts, 2011;Palmer & Bor, 2008) have producedhandbooks for trainees and practitioners,although these are intended for anaudience of counselling psychologists,counselors and psychotherapists, perhapsunderlining the breadth of salience of theissues. In a different vein, Milton (2010,2012) has edited two collections ofwork by UK counselling psychologistsexploring their practice beyond therapyand beyond diagnosis, and, incidentally,contributed a keynote talk at the 2011New Zealand Psychological Societyannual conference (Milton, 2011) onthe challenges of holding the tensionbetween differing approaches in apluralistic approach to practice.Turning to my own experience,I want to include here elements froma piece I wrote recently as part of theInstitute of Counselling Psychology’sattempt to scope the experiences andbackgrounds of the founding membersof our practice tradition in Aotearoa/New Zealand, as part of efforts tofurther the establishment of the practicetradition.I have identified as a counsellingpsychologist since 1985. I wasgrandparented into the practicediscipline in the UK, havinggained a BSc (Honours) inExperimental Psychology andan MSc in Psychotherapy, as wellas other training and experience.In the past, I worked in a rangeof health settings (adult and childmental health, child development,and primary health care), inuniversity counselling, and as atrainer and clinical supervisorof a range of other healthprofessionals. More recently, Ihave been in private practice as apsychologist and psychotherapist,working with individuals,couples, families and groups. Icontinue to supervise a range ofother health professionals, andto contribute to postgraduatetraining in both individual andgroup psychotherapy. I haverecently completed a PhD inwhich I developed a methodologyfor use in practitioner research andthen applied that methodology tomy own work as a trainer ofpsychotherapists. I have neverhad the job title ‘counsellingpsychologist’, but all of thepractice that I have describedhas been from this perspective(Farrell, 2012).I think the most significant elementof what I have written here in relationto the themes of this paper is ‘fromthis perspective’. Much of what Ido in my practice is psychoanalyticpsychotherapy, and I am credentialedand experienced in that field, but mycore professional identification is as acounselling psychologist.To summarise thus far, I want topropose that fundamentally, counsellingpsychology is a practice tradition,based on a set of values (notably aprivileging of the relationship betweena counselling psychologist and theirclient or clients, as a means to bothformulate and address the issues theybring), and aimed at addressing thewhole range of problems of living acrossthe lifespan, with diverse populationsand with regard to the cultural andsocial and ecosystemic contexts of thosepopulations. Essentially, I see it as theapplied psychology of counselling andpsychotherapy. In jurisdictions thatidentify counselling psychology as adistinct professional practice it seemsinevitable that its formal practicewill be limited in some way to thoseidentified as counselling psychologists.However, in those jurisdictions andelsewhere, elements (if not all theelements) of the practice traditionwill be practiced by those in manyallied fields and contexts, includingpsychologists from other practicetraditions (such as clinical, educational,industrial/organisational, community,forensic/criminal justice, and coachingpsychologists), psychiatrists and othermedical practitioners, psychotherapists,occupational therapists, nurses, socialworkers, teachers, clergy and others.In my view, rather than any attempt tolimit or restrict the practice of thoseothers, the challenge for counselling(and, indeed, for other) psychologists isto engage in relationship and dialoguewith those others in order to enable themin their pursuit of the highest standardsof understanding and practice.In my personal view, two definingNew Zealand Journal of Psychology Vol. 42, No. 3, 2013writers for contemporary counsellingpsychology are Bruce Wampold (2001)and Jonathan Schedler (2010). Wampoldhas the unusual provenance of beingboth a counselling psychologist anda statistician. He argues persuasivelythat the model that has been appliedin the evaluation of the psychologicaltherapies has been fundamentallya pharmacological or medicalmodel, with the gold standard of therandomised controlled trial, and thecomparison of ‘treatments’ (such as‘pharmacotherapy versus cognitivebehaviour therapy’) as though theywere discreet invariant entities, andin particular, relatively ignoring thecontribution of the therapist and client aspeople and the quality of the relationshipbetween them. For Wampold as formost counselling psychologists, what isrelatively ignored in the medical modelis the central concern of counsellingpsychology. Building on the work ofRosenzweig (1936) and Frank andFrank (1991), he puts forward the casefor the construction of psychologicaltherapy as an interpersonal process,based on a contextual model, includingconsideration of client characteristics,therapist qualities, change processes,treatment structures and relationshipelements, as articulated by Greencavageand Norcross (1990).Shedler furthers this argument,in relation to psychodynamicpsychotherapy in particular, through anexamination of pervasive myths amongstacademics, health care administratorsand planners:There is a belief in some quartersthat psychodynamic concepts andtreatments lack empirical supportor that scientific evidence showsthat other forms of treatmentare more effective. The beliefappears to have taken on a lifeof its own. Academicians repeatit to one another, as do healthcare administrators, as do healthcare policy makers. With eachrepetition, its apparent credibilitygrows. At some point, there seemslittle need to question or revisit itbecause “everyone” knows it tobe so (Shedler, 2010, p. 98).Shedler demonstrates convincinglythat where psychodynamicpsychotherapy has been evaluated, it 13

Bill Farrellleads to greater effect sizes than thoseseen in other forms of therapy, andindeed (consistent with the underlyingtheory) that these effect sizes aremaintained at follow-up and may wellcontinue to grow. Moreover, he goeson to argue that where other formsof therapy have been successful, it isfrequently because the therapy hasinvolved psychodynamic components(whether or not these are recognizedexplicitly by the clinician), and toproduce an inventory of the componentsof mental health, the Shedler-WestenAssessment Procedure (SWAP), thatcan be applied to the examination oftherapeutic practice (Shedler & Westen,2007).Although he is writing aboutpsychodynamic psychotherapy, in myview Shedler is exemplifying the bestof counselling psychology, including aperspective that can be readily derivedfrom Wampold’s (2001) ContextualModel.Counselling psychology inAotearoa/New Zealand –where has it come from, andwhere is it?I want to argue that counsellingpsychology probably represents aparticular form of a very widespreadif not universal human practice, that ofbeing in relationship with another orothers who may well be in distress orchallenged, and simultaneously seekingto make thoughtful use of the bestavailable resources of knowledge, skilland art in the service of that relationshipand hence of the other or others.In the light of this, one answer tothe question of where has counsellingpsychology come from? is that it hasactually been in Aotearoa/New Zealandsince there were first people here. I amnot equipped to articulate indigenouscounselling psychology, but I long tohear from those who can, and maybethis special section and what followswill invite and enable them to bringtheir voices forward. However, takingthe broad view, that the practice of someform of counselling psychology, in thesense of a systematic and theorised formof helping another or others throughthe relationship with them, is virtuallyintrinsic to humanity, it is clear thatpeople have had ways of helping and 14 being helped here for hundreds if notthousands of years. My focus in thispart of the paper is on what has beenavailable for import, and the roots ofthat. I do want to acknowledge that Irisk privileging a colonial myth thatknowledge of counselling psychology isinevitably exotic, but will seek to avoidthat. Nor am I suggesting that the formof counselling psychology in any culturewill be a universal one. As an aside,this tension, between risking becomingoverwhelmed by cultural imports, andalternatively risking an indifference towhat those imports might offer, is anissue shared by other countries in theworld, but one which has particularsalience in Aotearoa/New Zealand.Counselling psychology as a formalpractice discipline has identifiablestarting points in the USA, UK, Canada,South Africa and Australia. In additionto these starting points, there are rootsthat are less distinct.One root of counselling psychologystems from its relationship with clinicalpsychology, because the latter hasdeveloped very widely as a formalpractice in health care throughout theworld. Arguably, much of counsellingpsychology was amongst what was leftout when Hans Eysenck and colleaguesleft the then Medical Section of theBritish Psychological Society in thelate 1940’s in the pursuit of scienceas he understood it, in partnershipwith the new scientific psychiatry, toform the Society’s Division of ClinicalPsychology (Burton & Kagan, 2007, p.20). It can be argued that a process inthe USA which could be seen as kindof converse of this led to Carl Rogers’(1951) move, away from psychiatry andaspects of psychoanalysis and clinicalpsychology in America that had becomeassociated with it. In other parts of theworld, notably outside of the UK andthe USA, such transitions seem lessevident. When the UK was preparingfor greater integration with the EuropeanCommunity in the early 1990’s,European professional associationsbegan to get to know each other, anda representation of the response ofcontinental European psychologyassociations to the institutions of Britishcounselling and clinical psychologywas, ‘ we recognize you (counsellingpsychology), but who are they (clinicalpsychology)?’ (van Deurzen, 1992).My argument here is that in the UKand the USA, a set of values becamerelatively overlooked in the locallydominant practice traditions withinpsychology and needed to be recovered.In some other parts of the world suchas continental Europe, that process wasarguably less complete, hence perhapsneeding less of a formal remedy throughthe development of a separate practicediscipline.Looking at previous attempts priorto this Special Section to discusscounselling psychology in Aotearoa/New Zealand, arguably some ofthese did not get very far. Gibson andcolleagues (Gibson, Stanley, & Manthei,2004) opened ‘a window of opportunity’for counselling psychology, but weremet by a response from Fitzgeraldand colleagues (Fitzgerald, Calvert,Thorburn, Collie, & Marsh, 2005) thatcould hardly be seen as welcoming,together with a letter from Vertue(Vertue, 2005) warning course directorsof clinical psychology courses aboutcounselling psychologists.Despite this response to the attemptof Gibson et al to enhance the diversityof New Zealand psychology, includingan argument that their article shouldnot have been published and referenceto the strength of numbers of clinicalpsychologists, the article by Fitzgeraldet al has entered the literature as aclaimed example of stereotyping ofclinical psychologists (France, Annan,Tarren-Sweeney, & Butler, 2007) in thehandbook of professional practice ofpsychology in Aotearoa/New Zealandmentioned above (Evans et al., 2007).It is of interest that France et al’sbook chapter promotes the Jerichoprinciple (Culbertson, 1993), that thewalls around and between professionalspecialisations need to come downin the interests of (and in a sense, forthe protection of) the public. Franceet al also note Taylor’s account (1997)of how in 1967 the New Zealanduniversity departments of psychologyuncharacteristically acted in unisonwhen they voted unanimously toexclude all educational psychologistsfrom the newly formed New ZealandPsychological Society, a move whichthankfully did not succeed. This keyrelationship, of counselling psychologyNew Zealand Journal of Psychology Vol. 42, No. 3, 2013

Counselling Psychology in Aotearoa/New Zealandwith clinical psychology has, I believe,developed considerably since 2005,but remains a focus for challenge andtension.Another root in the origins ofcounselling psychology is therelationship with psychotherapy andcounselling. It is notable that in the BritishPsychological Society’s definition above(British Psychological Society, 2012),phenomenological models of practiceand enquiry are included alongside thoseof traditional scientific psychology,and the discipline is tasked with thecontinuing development of models ofpractice and research which marry thescientific demand for rigorous empiricalenquiry with a firm value base groundedin the primacy of the counselling orpsychotherapeutic relationship. Muchas there is a legacy from clinicalpsychology, there is also a strong legacyfrom counselling and psychotherapy, butwith the addition of a commitment to aparticular set of forms of research andpractice development.In both the USA and UK, as well asin parts of Europe and elsewhere, therehas been a tradition of psychotherapybeing a post-qualification specializationfor post-qualifying psychologistsalongside members of other healthand helping professionals. However,alongside the long tradition in Britishpsychoanalysis of ‘lay’ analysis, that is,analysis practiced by those other thanmedical practitioners, there are nowa number of practitioners in variousparts of the world including Aotearoa/New Zealand for whom psychotherapyis their first profession. Perhapsthe main consequence of this latterdevelopment is to reinforce the notionthat qualification (and registration) inpsychology is but a basic qualification,producing a beginning practitioner,and counselling psychologists andothers will have to contemplatecontinuing professional developmentthat will require post-qualificationtraining in various psychologicaltherapies. Another challenge in thisroot of counselling psychology is thequestion of how the links between theprofessions of counselling psychology,counselling and psychotherapy willdevelop. In the UK, the emergingdiscipline was formed by psychologistswho had taken postgraduate trainingin a range of psychotherapies after (oroccasionally before) their first degreesin psychology, and were familiar withpsychotherapy training requirementsfor the therapist to have some form ofpersonal psychotherapy as part of theirtraining. This requirement has been builtinto the British Psychological Society’sDiploma in Counselling Psychology(the benchmark in the UK for approvingtrainings), although this is not part ofthe requirements for the only Aotearoa/New Zealand training in counsellingpsychology at Auckland University ofTechnology.This leads to where is counsellingpsychology in Aotearoa/New Zealand?The answer must be that it is continuingto form. Although its formal beginningscould be said to be 2003, with theformation of the NZPsS Institute ofCounselling Psychology, I have outlinedabove how the relevant practice wouldhave been here long prior. Personally, Ihave been here ‘under the radar’ since1995, when I was informed by the thenRegistrar of the Psychologists Boardthat, “in New Zealand, psychology andpsychotherapy are entirely separate”,hoping through my person to give a lieto that, and I am sure there are manyother examples. As the discipline formsthough, trainers and training supervisorswill increasingly come from counsellingpsychology trainings themselves. Othercontributions in this Special Sectionwill outline the particular shape thatcounselling psychology is taking inAotearoa/New Zealand. From a formalperspective, the profession needs tocontinue to form international linkswith counselling psychologists aroundthe globe, but also with psychologist,psychotherapist, counselling andpsychiatric colleagues and others inAotearoa/New Zealand. Our arrivalmay have occasioned some discomfort,but we are here to stay, and, as outlinedbelow, hope to be able to contribute toa range of challenges facing all of us.Counselling psychology inAotearoa/New Zealand –where might it take us?Here I would like to turn to thechallenges of the future. There is arange of these, some of them perhapsonly relevant to those within the fieldof counselling psychology, whilst someNew Zealand Journal of Psychology Vol. 42, No. 3, 2013face a range of professionals, and yetothers are challenges that face all peoplein Aotearoa/New Zealand.Meeting the increasing andcomplex needs of an increasinglydiverse population.It is widely understood that statesystems of provision in countries suchas Aotearoa/New Zealand, as in manyplaces elsewhere face a demographiccrisis as increasing numbers of eldersand children look for support to aproportionally shrinking population ofadult workers. Here, where psychologistsand others are being urged to lead theresponse to this situation (Gorman,2012), counselling psychology surelyhas a role to play. With its emphasison empowering and enabling, there isimmense scope for work, with others,in a range of partnerships, to whichcounselling psychology and counsellingpsychologists can contribute.Working in partnership with Māori,and across multiple cultures.New Zealand psychology, whetherrepresented by the major professionalorganisations, the New ZealandPsychological Society, the New ZealandCollege of Clinical Psychologists, or thegovernment regulator of the profession,the New Zealand Psychologists Board,embodies various forms of commitmentto the Treaty of Waitangi and theprinciples of a bi-cultural relationshipbased on partnership, participationand protection. It behoves us all aspsychologists to give meaning to thatrelationship in our practice and otherwork, whether it be research, teaching,training, consulting or whatever elsewe do. Looking at the definitions ofcounselling psychology, notably that ofthe British Psychological Society withits emphasis on models of practice thatare non-discriminatory (see above), itis striking that counselling psychologyis an area of psychology that canaccommodate and would hopefullywelcome as equals models of practicebased on a Māori world-view, as wellas models from all cultures representedin Aotearoa/New Zealand.As in other psychologicalspecialties, the core values of thediscipline need to be acknowledged forthese other models to be acceptable,but the epistemological position of 15

Bill Farrellcounselling psychology in relation to thecommitment, for example, to elucidate,interpret and negotiate betweenperceptions and world views but notto assume the automatic superiority ofany one way of experiencing, feeling,valuing and knowing, offers a potentialplace for a meeting of bicultural andmulticultural practices without a needto choose between them on the basis ofa randomised controlled trial.The Transit of Venus Forum2012 – promoting step-change- understanding, highlighting,engaging public attention to, andaddressing the challenges of thepsychological and social forcesthat prevent or inhibit progress.A forum was held in Gisborne, NewZealand in June 2012 by a partnershipcoordinated by the Royal Society of NewZealand (Royal Society of New Zealand,2012). This event was initiate

pluralistic nature of society today (British Psychological Society, 2012). Finally, the New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPsS) has adopted the following definition: (Counselling psychology is) a psychological speciality that utilises and applies psychological knowledge and research at the individual, gro