Procrastination as problematic delay is a widely occurring phenomenon in modern society. It is particularly prevalent in academic settings where some students avoid or postpone their work in numerous ways. Over the last three decades, a substantial body of quantitative and some qualitative studies have been conducted, however, to date researchers are still unclear about what causes this problem and how it can be effectively helped. Working with procrastination is therefore considered an important issue for counselling psychologists, many of whom work in university student counselling services. The aim of this research was to conduct an inductive qualitative study to explore how university counsellors understand and work with students who present for help with procrastination. Ten volunteer participants were interviewed who mainly identified themselves as working integratively. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted and the results produced four master themes that highlighted firstly general challenges of working with students who procrastinate in university settings. Secondly, three distinct styles of procrastination were identified from these participants’ accounts as “de-skilled”, “anxious/fearful” and “conflictual”. These indicated a need for tailored therapeutic approaches that seemed to be enabled by an integrative therapeutic stance. Overall, it may be concluded that procrastination as a presenting problem in academia is a heterogeneous phenomenon that requires adaptable therapeutic approaches for individual students’ styles in relation to studying autonomously.

Since 2010 when the previous Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government came into power, major alterations have been introduced to the welfare state in the UK. The policy, commonly known as 'the bedroom tax' (BT) has received widespread public and media attention for its controversy and perceived attack on the finances and living conditions of low-income, working age households in need of welfare support. The implementation of this particular policy has reduced housing benefits for social housing tenants who are deemed to be under-occupying their homes according to the policy criteria. Families therefore, who are deemed to have a 'spare room' are required to make up the short-fall in rent or downsize to smaller properties. Research has shown that this policy has pushed vulnerable social housing tenants further into poverty and debt. This thesis has been designed to understand the everyday psychosocial effects of this policy further. It is a unique case study exploring life from a lone mother's experience of the policy. Data was collected from two interviews and over a ten-month period to assess whether time would be a factor that would affect the story told by one lone mother as she lives with the impacts of the policy. Both interviews were subject to critical narrative analysis. Murray's (1999) 'levels of narrative analysis' were drawn upon to analyse the multiple narratives occurring within this participant's experience of the BT, shedding light on stories told at the personal, interpersonal, positional and ideological level. The critical narrative analysis then looked at how these stories at each level connected to highlight the psychosocial implications of living with the BT policy as a single mother. The eight plotlines discovered in the analysis demonstrate the complicated areas, which contribute to the story as a whole. Time showed that pervasive feelings of stigmatisation and enforced social isolation occurred due to reduced economic resources and dominant cultural ideologies directed at welfare recipients. Overall, the present case study findings provide an example of the interrelatedness of wellbeing and wellness in the context of public policy changes. Moreover, it shows that the current social and political conditions are challenging the lives of those who find themselves in vulnerable socio-economic positions. The case study poses a number of challenges for counselling psychology, especially as there are ongoing debates on how the profession can engage effectively with wider social and political issues.

Objectives: This study aims to gain an understanding of how current trainee counselling psychologists perceive the scientist-practitioner model. Design: This is a qualitative piece of research grounded in a social constructionist perspective. Two focus groups were conducted lasting 60 minutes at two UK universities. An online survey was also conducted to capture additional views. Method: 29 trainees participated in the study. 15 trainees on counselling psychology doctorate programmes took part in face-to-face focus groups whilst 14 trainees from doctorate programmes or the independent route responded to an online survey. The data collected were analysed using Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis. Findings: Five main themes were identified in relation to the scientist-practitioner model: The Nature of Counselling Psychology, The Nature of Being a Counselling Psychologist, The Nature of Science, What Counts as Evidence, and What Happens in the Therapy Room. Conclusions: Much of the ambiguity and tensions in the literature were present in the views of participants. Three views emerged: the model as a spectrum, the model as two complementary roles, and the model as a toolbox. These views are explored and then implications for practice and possible directions for future research are outlined.

Background: The last few decades have seen neuroscience rapidly progress as a discipline. Development of research techniques such as neuroimaging have been utilised to increase an understanding of our species. Counselling psychologists are trained to combine the world of humanistic and phenomenological philosophies with an ability to understand and undertake psychological research, leading to interventions which are theoretically and subjectively informed. This work is undertaken through the reflexive and scientist-practitioner models which underpin the identity of the discipline. As such, counselling psychologists would seem ideally placed to integrate neuroscience into their work, utilising their reflective and scientist practitioner identities to both utilise and add to neuroscience research, helping to increase the understanding and efficacy of interventions for our species' mental health. However, it appears to be unknown as to whether this is something that counselling psychologists want, particularly in the UK. Aims and Method: The aim of this research was to explore UK based counselling psychologists' views and experiences of integrating neuroscience into their work. An interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was undertaken. Six participants were recruited into three different groups of interest/understanding in integrating neuroscience into counselling psychology. One hour semi-structured interviews were carried out with each participant to explore their views and experiences relating to the paradigm. Findings and Discussion: Six master themes emerged from the analysis; 'The Dangers of neuroscience', 'Defining neuroscience', 'There are ways that neuroscience can help us', 'Methods of learning and the need for training', 'Integration: The opposition and the need - finding the balance', and 'My practitioner identity'. The themes presented various advantages, dangers and challenges to integration, some of which aligned with existing literature and some of which presented new thoughts and feelings on the paradigm. Conclusion: The six master themes highlighted that participants indicated an overall view that UK counselling psychologists are currently integrating neuroscience into their work, utilising neuroscience theory as a way to develop their understanding of clients, as well as to communicate with clients and multi-disciplinary colleagues. Participants provided a number of experiential advantages of integration and indicated that they want to integrate even more with neuroscience, incorporating neuroscience into doctorate and CPD training, though they acknowledged the importance of balanced integration.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is understood as a difficult category to work with in various contemporary mental health settings. Additionally, to date, there is a dearth of research on this topic in Counselling Psychology. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore how Counselling Psychologists (CoPs) and other Psychological Practitioners (PPs) discursively construct ASPD and to investigate any discursive power games that may be implicated in therapeutic practice accounts. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted and a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) was applied to the data. The findings of the analysis produced five distinct therapeutic subject-positions: “Dangerous to Know”, “Damaged Goods”, “The White Collar Psychopath”, “Resisting to Psychiatric Norms” and “Critical Questioning”. Overall this analysis argues that ASPD is a problematic construct as it is produced by these participants as multiple, power laden and opaque. Additionally, these therapeutic subject-positions highlight how ASPD is variously produced in specific therapeutic contexts, such as medium secure units and private practice/ corporate environments. Such findings may contribute to raising awareness among CoPs and other PPs by making visible the power relations and contextual influences implicated in particular ASPD therapeutic accounts. Finally, it is also proposed that this Foucauldian gaze may be applied in other practice areas, to enable critical thinking in relation to potential uses of psychological knowledge, practice and research.

Children's well-being is an extremely relevant topic at the moment both culturally and politically. Counselling psychologists complete training that includes a diversity of clinical and research approaches though these focus mainly on adults and neglect children. This study aimed to explore the construction of counselling psychologists' experiences of, and perceived contribution to, working with children. Charmaz's (2006) social constructivist version of the original grounded theory method was employed. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants from the British Psychological Society's website. Participants also self-selected for the study. Eleven individuals who were chartered counselling psychologists and had experience of working with children therapeutically were interviewed. Intensive interviewing was employed and the interviews were audio-taped with a typed transcript of each produced. Data analysis revealed a central concept which the researcher termed 'Being a Professional Chameleon', which gained expression through the subcategories of 'Adapting to Working with Children', 'Professional Selves' and 'Training and Competency of Working with Children'. The findings are discussed in relation to related literature, counselling psychology training and career paths. Implications for the counselling psychology profession are discussed, including suggestions for future research and clinical practice.

The aim of the research was to examine how Counselling Psychologists perceive dependency in their clients and also how they experience the phenomenon in their therapeutic practice. Research suggests that dependency is relevant to the formation and continuance of relationships and that it can influence the strength and quality of those relationships and as such has a role in therapeutic relationships. Open-ended semistructured interviews were conducted with 8 Counselling psychologists with in excess of 5 years experience. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. 4 master themes were identified. ‘The therapeutic relationship as the context for dependency’ was consistent with existing literature on the importance of the therapeutic relationship. Participants were generally resistant to clients becoming dependent on them and maintained firm boundaries to avoid it and believed that greater experience made it easier to work with dependency. Participants’ reluctance to approach dependency issues was consistent with western societal values that seem to reject vulnerability and neediness. Significant for training and practice was the theme ‘feelings engendered by dependency’, with challenging reactions to dependency rarely being discussed in training or supervision and for which there is little professional support. The theme ‘impact of the theoretical approach and environment on dependency’ suggests that longer term therapy, such as psychodynamic approaches, encourage an over reliance on the therapist. The fourth theme ‘power’, indicated that participants recognised the influence of power in therapy and in general felt empowerment was an appropriate therapeutic goal.

A qualitative study was carried out with 10 qualified counselling psychologists to explore their perceptions regarding the influence of their early family experiences on their practice. The method employed was grounded theory using data gathered from semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the participants' accounts suggested that early family experiences provided a strong motivation to enter the field of counselling psychology, in order to make sense out of early difficult experiences and utilise early learned skills. Additionally, participants percieved their early experiences to have both a positive and negative influence on their therapeutic competency and practice. The experience of working through and coping with personal struggles enhanced their empathic, relexive abilities and emotional resilience in staying with their clients' difficulties. However, early experiences presented a challenge for the particpants in their ability to facilitate their clients' therapeutic process. These challenges were triggered when re-living earlier experiences in the therapeutic encounter. Early family and later experiences also appeared to influence the participants' developing professional identity, in providing inclinations of working with certain client groups, settings, and therapeutic modalities. In the process of developing their professional identity, participants were in search of authenticity by utilising the theories and therapeutic stance that fits with who they are internally. The participants also emphasised the importance of personal therapy, in terms of dealing with personal issues, increasing self-awareness, modelling their own practice and cultivating therapeutic skills. Personal therapy has been found to have a positive influence on therapeutic practice. A constructed theoretical framework is also presented offering an understanding of the main psychological process identified : "counselling psychologists' self-formation : entering a process of ongoing transformation". The implications of these findings for the relational practice of counselling psychology are discussed.

This study explores the phenomenon of therapists’ verbal self-disclosure in the therapeutic encounter. The purpose is to examine the clients’ experiences and attitudes on therapists’ verbal self-disclosure, when the clients are counselling psychology trainees or newly qualified counselling psychologists. The present study will attempt to discover what the participants believe constitutes self-disclosure and how influential their therapists’ verbal self-disclosure or lack of it, has been in the development of their personal and professional stance on self-disclosure in their own work with clients. Since the researcher is interested in clients who themselves are developing counselling psychologists, the study sheds light on how their therapists’ verbal disclosure (or lack of it) influences their developing professional identity. The majority of studies exploring therapists’ self-disclosure have favoured quantitative methodologies; however, a case can be made for using a qualitative phenomenological approach to explore this phenomenon on the grounds that it provides a more detailed representation of the experience and allows for an in-depth phenomenological understanding of the complexity and content of self-disclosure. Nine developing counselling psychologists were interviewed for this study and the three major findings of the study are that a) developing counselling psychologists, influenced by their own personal therapy, do engage in counter-transference self-disclosure, b) the decision to engage in self-disclosure or not is made upon their intuition and ‘gut feeling’ and c) although training institutions or supervisors might not encourage self-disclosure, participants still engage in it. These findings raise questions concerning the role of training versus the role of personal therapy in shaping trainees’ client work, as well as issues regarding the reasons why they chose to self-disclose or not and the role of intuition.

Collaboration between therapist and client has been put forward as a core element of successful therapeutic encounters. There has been debate as to the nature of collaboration in cognitive behavioural therapy. In the UK this debate has intensified since the introduction of Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) in 2008 as CBT is the favoured therapeutic modality within IAPT. Collaboration in CBT has been conceptualised in dichotomous ways. From one perspective it is constructed in positivistic terms, in which the therapist implements manualised protocols with little consideration for the therapeutic relationship; from the other perspective collaboration is constructed in dialogic terms, in which therapist and client use CBT interventions to consider new meanings that the client deems to be relevant. The current study used a discourse analytic methodology to investigate how CBT therapists construct collaboration in their therapeutic practices. The aim was to explicate interpretive repertories that participants used in the construction of collaboration. Semi-structured interviews were used with 8 CBT therapists. Questions related to the arguments for and against the nature of collaboration in CBT. A client choice interpretive repertoire was used by all participants. It was constructed in various ways in line with either positivistic or dialogic perspectives or elements of both. Individual participants constructed client choice from both perspectives suggesting that the dichotomy in perspectives on collaboration in CBT may not be clear-cut. There is an implication for counselling psychology practitioners to reflect on their use of dichotomous perspectives to conceptualise their professional identities.