Counselling and psychotherapy training courses emphasise the importance of trainee's personal growth and development but there seems to be little understanding of what these terms actually mean in terms of trainee's personal changes and experiences and how they impact on trainees, their relationships and clinical practice. This study explores the personal change experiences of seven trainee counselling psychologists from six London universities using semi-structured interviews. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) identified nineteen common themes across four domains: (a) personal changes, (b) the impact of personal changes on trainee’s relationships and clinical practice, (c) the experiences contributing to changes, (d) acknowledgement of personal change in training. The findings show that counselling psychology training has a profound impact on trainees which affects their relationship with themselves, their partner, family, friends and their clinical practice, however the findings show that this impact is not made clear or addressed and supported enough in training. Since little research has been conducted into trainee's experiences through training, the findings from this study provide a much needed insight into trainee's experiences, and the implications of these findings for training programmes and directions for future research are discussed. The findings highlight that more research into the personal impact of training is needed to normalise and contextualise trainee's experiences, facilitate trainee's learning and engagement and increase their awareness of the positive and transformative changes and contributions to clinical practice which counselling psychology training can enable.

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Given the high rates of premature termination in training clinics, research aimed at understanding client attrition is urgently needed. Recent investigations in this area have implicated expectations of psychotherapy as a strong predictor of premature termination; however, this phenomenon has only been studied from the perspective of client expectations to date. There is reason to believe clinician expectations for the duration and effectiveness of psychotherapy may further impact the likelihood of their clients terminating prematurely. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the association of clinicians' expectations to clients' psychotherapy outcomes and termination status in a training clinic setting. Clinicians were found to hold significantly higher expectations for client improvement than would be expected, and these high expectations were found to be positively correlated with clinically significant change in clients. Implications for improving client retention and treatment outcome in training clinics are discussed.

Thesis (D. Phil.(Social Work))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Abstract in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

This project investigated the spiritual well-being (SWB) of psychotherapists in training and their physiological reactions to religious questions posed by a mock client. Electrodermal activity served as an index of physiological arousal interpreted as anxiety. Thirteen psychotherapists in training at the University of North Texas were recruited. They participated in a simulated intake session with a mock client who asked the psychotherapist neutral questions, personal-other questions (POQs), and personal-religious questions (PRQs). It was discovered that the level of SWB did not affect subjects' anxiety responses to PRQs. There also was no difference in subjects' anxiety responses for POQs between high and low SWB therapists. However, psychotherapists did experience some anxiety associated with questions related to their counseling experience and expertise.

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Introduction: This is a study that explores how U.K.-based counselling psychology trainees perceive that they acquire the skills and abilities required for competent practice and their understanding of what it means to be competent practitioners. It outlines some of the factors that have influenced how therapeutic competence is defined in the current climate of NHS healthcare. It indicates that the training curriculum and the professional culture of their clinical placements influenced trainees' perceptions and definitions of therapeutic competence. Literature Review: The literature review for the thesis covers two major areas. Firstly the sources for discovering how therapeutic competence is defined in counselling and psychotherapy are presented before considering the standards for competent practice in counselling psychology. Secondly the literature on trainees' experiences in training and the qualitative studies related to trainees' experiences of developing competence in training. Key themes from this review indicate that the field of counselling psychology has a commitment to its philosophical roots in humanism, personal development, and evidence-based practice. Methodology: A philosophy of qualitative analysis which introduces the grounded theory method is outlined. The assumptions, values and epistemology of the researcher are stated. The phases of the study which include: 1, Recruitment, 2. Pilot Interviews, 3. Data Collection, 4. Data Analysis, and 5. Developing the Theoretical Framework are described. A qualitative research approach based on constructionist assumptions was utilised in this study. Eleven trainee counselling psychologists were interviewed. The interviews were analysed using grounded theory analysis. Findings: This section includes a summary of two analytical phases which produced focused codes and a coding hierarchy. The results were two core categories: Perceptions of Competence and Defining Competence. Seven subcategories were also developed. Three of these subcategories, Coursework, Observer Feedback and Self-Reflections on Competence, were associated with the core category, Perceptions of Competence. Four subcategories - Clinical Experience, Reflexive Thinking/Self-Awareness, Theories and Models, and Supervision - were linked with the core category, Defining Competence. Discussion: Methods were discussed by which trainees perceive, acquire, and define therapeutic competence. The themes of self-perception of competence and self-confidence were identified as being relevant to therapeutic competence. Some of the vehicles for developing competence were highlighted including the idea that participants reflect on their experiences in training and clinical practice to develop competence. Some surprising results included a lack of evidence to suggest that trainees were thinking about the influence of pharmacology on treatment and some key professional issues (like multicultural competence and the social justice agenda) did not garner very much attention in the interviews. My contribution to knowledge is to inform training and therapist development by illuminating these processes in the context of U.K. based training programmes and representing the trainees' voice in the literature on developing competence in counselling psychology.

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal encounter where a therapist collaborates with clients to facilitate a healing process. Due to the personal nature of the therapeutic encounter, the therapist requires the necessary skills and knowledge, as well as a differentiated sense of self. The importance of supporting the psychotherapy trainee’s own differentiation process seemed to have been neglected in research in recent years. In South Africa there has recently been increasing pressure to select larger groups of trainees which has the risk that the tending to differentiation would further be neglected. The purpose of this research study is to reemphasise the importance of differentiation of self of the psychotherapy trainee by examining my own process of differentiation during my psychotherapy training. This study introduces the reader to these concepts and explores psychotherapy training in general and the Unisa training method specifically. The research design of this study is autoethnography which falls in the realm of social constructionism and the coding method is Thematic Data Analysis. The research findings as reflected in the two global themes namely individuation; and gaining and strengthening authentic relationships, seem to accurately reflect the process of differentiation. The specific training method of the Unisa training team in combination with the way in which I engaged with this process seemed important for the facilitation of this process of differentiation. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal encounter where a therapist collaborates with clients to facilitate a healing process. Due to the personal nature of the therapeutic encounter, the therapist requires the necessary skills and knowledge, as well as a differentiated sense of self. The importance of supporting the psychotherapy trainee’s own differentiation process seemed to have been neglected in research in recent years. In South Africa there has recently been increasing pressure to select larger groups of trainees which has the risk that the tending to differentiation would further be neglected. The purpose of this research study is to reemphasise the importance of differentiation of self of the psychotherapy trainee by examining my own process of differentiation during my psychotherapy training. This study introduces the reader to these concepts and explores psychotherapy training in general and the Unisa training method specifically. The research design of this study is autoethnography which falls in the realm of social constructionism and the coding method is Thematic Data Analysis. The research findings as reflected in the two global themes namely individuation; and gaining and strengthening authentic relationships, seem to accurately reflect the process of differentiation. The specific training method of the Unisa training team in combination with the way in which I engaged with this process seemed important for the facilitation of this process of differentiation. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

The hypothesis derived from four case studies proposes that if at a philosophical level the training is choreographed at confusing levels of philosophical punctuations, and the training programme involves an ongoing commentary on the 'self' of the trainee, and this ongoing commentary interrupts or interferes with the process in which the 'self' comes to be defined, then on an experiential level the training context is unstable for experiential exploration, and the trainee experiences psychological discomfort. A further five case studies are investigated using focused interviews and content analysis to verify the hypothesis. The author-text-reader metaphor serves to describe the trainer-training-trainee relationship. This reveals that the trainee experiences psychological discomfort, often perceived as psychological damage, when the training text is incoherent and therefore unreadable. In each instance where the training text was found incoherent the trainer was identified as the author, and therefore responsible and accountable for the trainee's psychological discomfort. / Na aanleiding van vier gevallestudies word 'n hipotese afgelei wat voorstel dat wanneer opleiding op 'n filosofiese vlak gechoreografeer word vanuit onsamehangende vlakke van filosofiese punktuasies, en waar sogenaamde opleidingsprogramme voortgesette kommentaar op die 'self' van die student lewer, en waar hierdie voortgesette kommentaar die proses waardeur die 'self' gedefinieer word onderbreek of beinvloed, word die opleidingskonteks op 'n ervaringsvlak onstabiel vir ervaringsondersoek en die student beleef sielkundige ongemak. 'n Verdere vyf gevallestudies word daarna ondersoek, en deur middel van gefokusde onderhoude en inhoudsanalise word die hipotese bevestig. Die skrywer-teks-leser metafoor word dan aangewend om die dosent-opleiding-student verhouding te beskryf. Dit onthul dat die student sielkundige ongemak ervaar, dikwels beskou as sielkundige skade, wanneer die opleidingsteks onsamehangend en dus onleesbaar is. In elke geval waar die opleidingsteks onsamehangend bevind is, word die dosent as die skrywer geiidentifiseer en kan dus verantwoordelik en aanspreeklik gehou word vir die student se sielkundige ongemak. / Psychology / M. A. (Clinical Psychology)