Counselling Psychology: From Courses to Networks

Abstract

Courses, and their development, provide us with a way of understanding something of the knowledge and practice which they claim to represent. They also reflect the contexts in which they are written. At the beginning of this decade the task of developing a Masters programme in psychological counselling was still a fairly isolated one. For historical reasons, most practitioners of counselling in this country had trained and worked outside the university sector. Few, if any, counselling courses had found a place on undergraduate or postgraduate programmes. Most were housed in extra-mural departments. The segregation led to a poverty of dialogue between those engaged in what is termed academic research and the practitioner. It also generated unhelpful stereotypes and prejudices. Not a few practitioners have entertained suspicions about the real life applicability of some of the thinking generated from within the university sector. And within academia there are those who have wondered if something as apparently unscientific, by whatever definition (Heather, 1976), as counselling psychology could find respectable expression upon a Final’s examination paper.