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email: richard@counsellingconversations.com
website: counsellingconversations.com

Focus of practice

When I first read George Kelly’s two volume Psychology of Personal Constructs, I had a sense of coming home. I think there were a number of reasons for this. Not least, it matched my experience of having had therapy some years before, where my therapist, although not PCP trained, had very much acted as a supervisor to my experiments in coming up with a change of direction and new life plan. My need for a change came after severe sciatica had disrupted my fledgling career as an accountant.

In getting myself fit to live a full and active life, which includes running, swimming, hill walking and going to concerts, I had found the Alexander Technique to be an invaluable help. I was and continue to be fascinated by the Alexander Technique and trained as an Alexander Technique teacher, as the first step in a new life. In teaching, I found myself more and more interested in the psychological aspects of learning and in the pupil’s experience of lessons. In looking for a theory that recognised the personal meanings of pupils, and that was fully applicable to my own experience, I came across PCP and with that the sense of coming home, I decided to train as a psychotherapist – so that I now teach the Alexander Technique and practice as a psychotherapist. I find the two work well together and enrich each other.

Along the way I write articles and blog about both and how they interact. In this, PCP is a most congenial psychology for working with embodiment, personal meanings, relationships and the philosophies of life. PCP recognises that each person has to work out their own philosophy of life, as they work out a life plan that hopefully makes them feel as if they have come ‘alive.’ This is Kelly’s definition of successful therapy, which is a wonderful thing to witness happen and is part of the joy of being a therapist. In this, PCP as a therapeutic approach and as a ‘psychology for living’ continues to inspire me as a way of both working and living.