Abstract
The present body of work is a portfolio of academic essays, therapeutic practice and research undertaken as part of my Doctorate in Psychotherapeutic and Counselling Psychology at the University of Surrey. It consists of three dossiers each relating to the above areas respectively. The academic dossier contains three selected papers from work completed for the purposes of demonstrating learning from taught modules on ‘Theoretical Models of Therapy’ and ‘Understanding Human Distress’. It is linked thematically by an underlying interest in theoretical integration and cross-fertilisation of concepts pertinent to counselling psychology. The therapeutic practice dossier outlines my clinical experience and includes brief descriptions of the placements and other therapeutic work I undertook throughout my training. It further includes my Final Clinical Paper, which offers an intimate narrative of my heretofore development as a counselling psychologist. The research dossier includes original research conducted in the last three years and makes explicit the rationale for the trajectory I have followed subsequent to exploring the literature on shamanism vis-a-vis psychotherapy. More specifically, it includes a discourse analytic study of representations of psychotherapy in popular music and a narrative inquiry into the ethos of the ‘wounded healer’, both from a social constructionist epistemological position. Reflections foregrounding the use of myself in my capacities as a scientist and a practitioner are offered throughout and links to counselling psychology theory and practice are pursued in every piece contained in this portfolio.