Abstract
This portfolio consists of academic, research and therapeutic work submitted as part of my training to become a counselling psychologist. The portfolio is divided into three different dossiers: academic, therapeutic and a research dossier. Academic Dossier The academic dossier consists of three essays submitted during the course. The first essay critically reviews the difficulties of using projective identification in therapy. The second essay explores various factors that may contribute to resistance in cognitive behavioural therapy and the ways in which a practitioner might work with resistance in clinical practice. The third essay critically evaluates standard psychopathological classification systems in relation to schizophrenia. Therapeutic Dossier The therapeutic dossier contains descriptions of a range of my placements, therapeutic work and placement activities. It also includes my final clinical paper, which provides a reflective account of my therapeutic practice, supervision, research experience, theory and use of self. Research Dossier The research dossier incorporates three pieces of research. My literature review critically evaluates the relevant literature on the practicalities of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. My second piece of research employed a quantitative content analysis to identify the most prominent arguments in favour of IAPT as represented in the relevant literature. Finally, I present a piece of research which used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the perceptions of IAPT of recently graduated counselling psychologists looking for employment.