Critical Thinking in Counselling and Psychotherapy
- Colin Feltham - Emeritus Professor of Counselling & Psychotherapy, Sheffield Hallam University
Ranging from more mainstream subjects like unconditional positive regard, ethics and supervision to broader social or philosophical issues such as employment concerns and the debate on assisted suicide, entries include:
- Why have we focused on core theoretical models?
- What are the pros and cons of short-term, time-limited counselling?
- What's wrong with CBT?
- Where is research taking us?
- Is statutory regulation a good and inevitable development?
- Are there limits to personal change in counselling?
Each section includes questions for reflection, case studies and student exercises. This comprehensive, student-friendly text is a useful resource for lecturers to stimulate seminar discussion, and for all trainees wishing to write essays or generally develop their critical thinking in counselling and psychotherapy.
Critical thinking should be a core attribute of the thinking practitioner. Feltham raises many important issues concerning practice, research, training, professionalisation, etc. Rather than providing answers, Feltham invites the reader to reflect on the topic from many different angles. This book therefore provides an excellent resource for teachers on counselling and supervision courses.
This text provides students with a critical review regarding counselling theory and the skills required for the practice setting.
Feltham has really captured the central idea around critical thinking within this text, and the way that he poses questions for personal review rather than to offer answers and 'the truth' is an excellent teaching tool for encouraging reflective practice. In essence he poses an issue and then asks "So what do you think, given this information?" An excellent addition to our suggested reading list.
Comprehensive and up to date volume for final year counsellors in training, developing as reflective practitioners.
This book will be a fantastic asset for our course as it covers many core topics relating to counselling training. I will have no hesitation in recommending it to our students and will be ordering copies as a resource for our course.
This is a very useful book, both for undergraduates who are exploring in a theoretical way some of the issues involved in counselling, and for postgraduates who are actually training in the profession. After the introduction, each chapter addresses a specific question: eg "who founds schools of counselling and why?" and "how important are boundaries in counselling practice?". One or more peices of further reading are suggested in each chapter, and case studies and questions for discussion included in some sections. Chapters are short and pithy enough to use for assignments or in-class discussions.
This is a very readable series of brief provocative essays gauranteed to provoke some critical thinking. Ocassionally there is an absence of adequate referencing, but this book seems to be intended not as a academic tome, but a stimulation for thinking.
I will certainly use it in teaching and recommend to students ... The book contains a number of challenge and case study exercises that could be very helpful in small group exercises.
However, most art therapy practitioners work in some kind of 'public' or 'third' sector employment and the author's perspective is mainly concerned with that of the individual self-employed practitioner. So for example, the discussion on suicide and protection of the public seem only partial to me as an art therapist working in the NHS. These essays are nevertheless, good sustenance for thinking and I will definitely have a look at more of Feltham's writing. Dr Chris Wood: Art Therapy Northern Programme Sheffield (SHSC).
An interesting and informative read. This book explores some of the key themes in counselling and offers thought provoking ways of viewing them.
An essential thought provoking book for both the reflective counsellor and student counsellor assignments requiring critical thinking and analysis
An interestingly presented book that gives a critical perspective on a whole range of relevant counselling issues, as well as to present a way for counsellors to critically think