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Pluralistic Practice

Celebrating diversity in therapy

  • Home
  • About
    • How Pluralistic Therapy Works
    • Introduction to Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy
    • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on the pluralistic approach
    • Writing a Blog for Pluralistic Practice
    • Past Networking Events
  • Training
    • Degree Courses
    • Master’s Courses
    • Doctoral Courses
  • Research
    • Research Initiatives
    • Evidence to Support Pluralistic Practice
    • Research News
    • Developing a Pluralistic Framework for Counselling and Psychotherapy Research – BACP workshop
  • Publications
  • Tools and Measures
  • Videos
    • Pluralistic Conference 2020
  • Get Involved
  • Blog

Welcome

Welcome to our pluralistic practice website. We hope you find it an interesting and valuable resource for developing pluralistic thinking and practice in the counselling and psychotherapy field.

We are delighted to invite submissions for the fifth international conference on pluralistic counselling and psychotherapy, hosted by The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. This conference theme is ‘The power of collaborative relationships: working together to rebuild lives and communities’.

We are seeking submissions of abstracts for:

● Papers of 30 or 60 minutes (20 or 45-minutes presentation/10 or 15-minute questions)
● Panel dialogues (60 minutes)
● Workshops (60 or 90 minutes)
● Poster presentations to the full conference (2 minutes per presentation, again with a focus on one of the two strands)

The deadline for submission is Friday 29th April.

Who: We welcome submissions from trainees, practitioners, and service users, as well as more experienced academic and researchers. Our aim is to create a warm, friendly, and supportive environment in which a plurality of voices and perspectives can be heard and exchanged.

If you are interested in presenting you can find the submission form here and send the completed form to pluralistic@rgu.ac.uk.

If you want to attend as a participant you can find tickets here


Pluralistic counselling and psychotherapy is based on two key principles:

  • There’s no ‘best’ way of doing therapy: different clients need different things at different times. 
  • If therapists want to find out the best way of helping clients, they should talk to them about it. 

This doesn’t mean that clients will always know what they want, or that what clients want is what they need; but that any views that clients have on how best to do therapy should be actively elicited, respected, and engaged with.

Pluralism in counselling and psychotherapy can be both an attitude towards therapy and a specific practice. 

  • Pluralistic attitude: a general respect for different approaches, and a willingness to help clients find the right therapy for them. That means that therapists who practice ‘pure form’ therapies—like person-centred counselling or CBT—can still consider themselves pluralistic. 
  • Pluralistic practice: a form of therapy in which the practitioner draws on a range of methods and understandings to try and tailor the therapy to the individual client—based on what they and the client think may be most helpful.
What is the pluralistic approach to therapy? Tamsin Cavaliero did this fantastic graphic translation of a recent talk by Mick Cooper introducing pluralism. Click here to listen to the presentation.

This Pluralistic Practice website is the central hub for information and resources about the pluralistic approach, developed by the leading people in the field. It is primarily orientated towards counsellors and psychotherapists who identify with, or are interested in, the pluralistic approach; but it is also accessible to clients and other interested laypeople.

Pluralistic Therapy Cards, by Shirley Brennan

If you are interested in contributing to the website we welcome blog posts. You can also join our Facebook discussion group @pluralisticpractice , or see our posts on Twitter @PluralPractice , or Instagram @pluralisticnetwork .

You can also email us with your comments and ideas.

Marc Johnson, Abertay University, has developed a fantastic new video on developing a timeline map.

Blog Post Categories
  • Arts therapies (16)
  • CBT (1)
  • Children (2)
  • Co-production (8)
  • CPD (4)
  • Critiques (9)
  • Cultural diversity (5)
  • Cultural resources (10)
  • Deliberate practice (2)
  • Epistemology (3)
  • Gender (2)
  • Goals (3)
  • Groups (7)
  • Information and Updates (26)
  • Inner plurality (2)
  • Integrative and Eclectic Practices (4)
  • Leadership (3)
  • Measures (2)
  • Metatherapeutic communication (2)
  • Narrative therapies (1)
  • Networking (9)
  • No Category (1)
  • Older adults (1)
  • Online (6)
  • Person-centred (13)
  • Personal (31)
  • Philosophy (17)
  • Policy (3)
  • Politics (10)
  • Practice (38)
  • Preferences (14)
  • Research (16)
  • Shared decision making (16)
  • Social justice (4)
  • Spirituality (2)
  • Strengths and Resources (4)
  • Supervision (2)
  • Therapeutic approaches (9)
  • Training (23)
  • Young people (2)
Recent Posts
  • ICPCP 2022 Conference Next Week! May 24, 2022
  • Pluralism: Beyond Therapeutic Integration? May 23, 2022
  • The Many Varied Forms of Knowledge in Pluralistic Practice May 17, 2022
  • The 2022 International Conference on Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy: A Personal Introduction to the Speakers and What their Work has meant to me –John McLeod April 27, 2022
  • ‘Scaffolding’ and ‘De-Specifying’: Deepening an Understanding of Clients’ Preferences through Conversational Analysis April 7, 2022
  • Deadline for Submissions Extended April 4, 2022
  • The Metatherapeutic Current in Pluralism March 31, 2022
  • Tickets Now Available! March 30, 2022
  • Psychotherapy at a Time of Social and Political Change and Crisis: Where Do We Stand? What Do We Have to Offer? March 29, 2022
  • Levelling the Land: The Topography of Inequality February 24, 2022
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