Main Blog – Pluralistic Practice

The Inventory of Preferences: An International Evaluation

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton Over the past few years, a team of us have been working together to bring together all the datasets on the Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preferences (C-NIP). The tool was developed by John Norcross and myself to support the assessment of clients’…

‘Therapeutic Expertise’? Deliberately Curious From a Pluralistic Perspective!

September 20, 2023 Deliberate practice Research Training No Comments

Kerry-Jayne Lambert, University of Roehampton (lambertk@roehampton.ac.uk) Deliberate practice (DP) is argued to be at the ‘cutting edge’ of counselling and psychotherapy. It is a set of training methods aimed to support therapists to improve their clinical performance by isolating and focusing on specific skill subsets. This is considered similar to…

Being a Pluralistic Supervisor: A Personal Reflection

July 24, 2023 Co-production Deliberate practice Supervision Training No Comments

Darren Hopgood, Counsellor and supervisor in private practice, Darren Hopgood Counselling I have been a pluralistic counsellor for five years now, so not long. I have been a supervisor for just over a year, so not long at all. This is a short reflection on some things I have learned…

Making Learning Personal and Pluralistic: Giving Students What They Need, What They Want, and What Makes Sense

July 4, 2023 Cultural diversity Metatherapeutic communication Training 5 Comments

Dr Paul Galbally & Dr Fevronia Christodoulidi, BSc (Hons) Counselling, University of East London In our exciting new article in Teaching in Higher Education, we take a pluralistic perspective to demonstrate how academics at the University of East London—working with a diverse cohort of students in a collaborative, reflexive, and…

Preference Work: Notes from the Other Side

June 28, 2023 Metatherapeutic communication Personal Preferences No Comments

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton Yesterday, my lovely osteopath said to me at the start of our session, ‘What would you like to work on?’ It was unexpected and I smiled: funny to be on the other side of preference assessments. My response wasn’t what I…

Enhancing Mental Health and Wellbeing Outcomes for Psychotherapy and Counselling through Idiographic Analysis: A Four-Quadrant Approach

May 31, 2023 Measures Research Shared decision making No Comments

Jenna Jacob, Research Lead, Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC) at Anna Freud I completed a Ph.D. by published works at the University of Roehampton in 2020. This is an alternative route to a Ph.D. qualification, where the research is already published and then the candidate pulls together a supporting piece…

The Radical Nature of Pluralism in Therapy

April 19, 2023 Critiques Person-centred Personal Philosophy Shared decision making Strengths and Resources Training 5 Comments

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton One of the challenges to pluralism in therapy, over the years, is that we’re not really saying anything new. The challenge goes something like, ‘Yeah, pluralism, that’s great, but we’re all pluralists anyway. I’ve been doing pluralism for years.’ Being pluralistic,…

Submission Extension Deadline

March 29, 2023 CPD Information and Updates Networking Online No Comments

We are delighted to be able to extend the deadline for submissions for our June conference. The new deadline is the 28th April 2023. This year’s theme is ‘Applied Pluralistic Therapy: What are we doing in practice?’ and will explore the impact of collaboration and taking our practices beyond the…

Going for Accreditation as a Pluralistic Counsellor

March 23, 2023 Accreditation Practice Training 1 Comment

John Hills, Tricia Joyce, Julia McLeod, Nicola Blunden, James Schindler-Ord, and Gary Tebble. With thanks to: Kevin Kirwan (BACP) and Jenny McLintock (COSCA) If you are a pluralistic therapist preparing to apply for accreditation, you may be wondering about professional body attitudes towards pluralism, as an emerging approach within counselling…

Conference Tickets and Call for Papers

March 17, 2023 CPD Information and Updates Philosophy Practice Training No Comments

The International Conference on Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy is excited to invite practitioners, academics, and individuals interested in the Pluralistic approach to our annual event. This year’s theme is ‘Applied Pluralistic Therapy: What are we doing in practice?’ and will explore the impact of collaboration and taking our practices beyond…

Causality in Psychotherapy and Counselling: Towards Evidential Pluralism

January 25, 2023 Critiques Philosophy Research 2 Comments

Hanne Weie Oddli, University of Oslo, Norway To get a true picture of causal relationships in psychotherapy and counselling we need to approach the question from different angles by use of various research designs. Why should we care about causality at all? Bertrand Russell, in his seminal essay ‘On the…

What do Clients Really Make of Working with Preferences?

January 23, 2023 Co-production Metatherapeutic communication Preferences Research Shared decision making No Comments

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton Asking clients about their preferences, and trying to accommodate them, is right at the heart of pluralistic practice. But what is that actually like for clients? Do clients want us to ask them about their preferences? Do they find it helpful?…

Sixth International Conference on Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. Save the Date!

January 11, 2023 CPD Information and Updates Online Practice 5 Comments

We are delighted to announce the date and theme of this years conference! It will be on 2nd and 3rd June 2023, and will be titled Applied Pluralistic Therapy: What are We Doing in Practice? Although we are keen to get in person events back up and running, we have…

Interview with Artificial Intelligence Bot ‘ChatGPT’ about Pluralistic Therapy… and It Writes Us a Poem, Too

December 14, 2022 Information and Updates Integrative and Eclectic Practices 4 Comments

Nicola Blunden, Metanoia Institute. Some of you may have seen the incredible new Artificial Intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, released recently for free use. I asked it to describe itself for this blog, and it replied: I am a large language model trained by OpenAI. I am designed to generate human-like text…

How My Therapist Dumped Me on My Birthday for Voicing Preferences

December 7, 2022 Metatherapeutic communication Personal Preferences Shared decision making 7 Comments

Simon Yeates, IICP, Dublin, MSc Pluralism, Year 1 In January 2022 I turned 31. During this time, I was struggling. Becoming a new father seven months previously coupled with sleep deprivation and coronavirus restrictions had taken a toll and I had made the decision for both me and my family…

A response to Ong, Murphy, and Joseph regarding Cooper and McLeod’s exposition of pluralistic practice

November 9, 2022 Cultural diversity Epistemology Person-centred Philosophy Therapeutic approaches No Comments

Ross Crisp, ross.crispsy@gmail.com In their 2020 article, published in Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, Ong, Murphy, and Joseph claimed that Cooper and McLeod’s exposition of pluralistic practice embraces specific ontological ‘positions’ for different schools of psychotherapy. They argued, incorrectly, that it equates to an ‘ontological eclecticism’ that is incompatible with Carl…

International Conference on Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy Prize Winners

October 20, 2022 Arts therapies Children Co-production Cultural resources Deliberate practice Goals Information and Updates Preferences Research Young people 2 Comments

We are delighted to announce our conference prize winners from the last two years. You can find more information on each of the projects and links to watch the presentations below. You can watch all of the recordings from the conference here. Congratulations to all of our prize winners! Senior…

Pluralistic Practice: A Medical Anthropology Perspective

July 22, 2022 Anthropology Cultural diversity Epistemology 3 Comments

Dr Natalie Tobert, Medical Anthropologist, natalietobert@gmail.com , https://www.aethos.org.uk/ Multiple Narratives, Plural Perspectives One essential requirement of the discipline of medical anthropology is to honour multiple narratives around health and wellbeing. Research within medical anthropology always ensures plural perspectives are explored, so people are witnessed according to their own understandings, and…

Introducing ‘pluralistic sand-tray therapy’: Humanistic principles for working creatively with adult clients

July 19, 2022 Arts therapies Practice Therapeutic approaches No Comments

Doreen Fleet PhD, Visiting lecturer and PhD Research Supervisor, University of Chester; Author of Pluralistic sand-tray therapy (2022, Routledge) As a counsellor and trainer, I have always seen the benefit of using sand-tray with adult clients who want to work creatively. The client will select objects to symbolise their inner…

New edition of Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy: Call for Feedback and Suggestions

July 6, 2022 Information and Updates No Comments

John McLeod & Mick Cooper, PCP2e@pluralisticpractice.com When Pluralistic counselling and psychotherapy was published by Sage in 2011, it offered an introduction to a collaborative way of working with clients, based on a relatively limited body of practice and research evidence. Over the last decade, pluralistic theory, training, and practice has…

Is There A Need For Pluralistic CBT?

June 27, 2022 CBT Personal Practice Therapeutic approaches 2 Comments

Ashleigh Hennessy, 2nd Year BA (Hons) Student, studying Counselling and Therapeutic Practice at the University of South Wales Currently there is a lack of research and writing into the benefits of doing CBT within the pluralistic framework. Although Beck, as cited by Windy Dryden, emphasises the importance of collaboration within…

Pluralistic Therapy Meets Global Mental Health

June 17, 2022 Cultural resources Information and Updates Networking Politics Strengths and Resources No Comments

Lynne Gabriel, Christine Kupfer, John McLeod, Kate Smith and Mhairi Thurston A group of members of the pluralistic network recently participated in a two-day on-line conference on Pluralizing Global Mental Health Care: crisis, and critique, hosted by the University of Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology. We presented two papers –…

Final Schedule and Last Call for Tickets

June 3, 2022 CPD Online Practice Research Training No Comments

We everyone is enjoying the long weekend! We are all getting very excited to welcome all of the pluralistic community to the conference tonight and tomorrow! Get Tickets Here. Read the Schedule for the Weekend Here. Check out the Conference Booklet Here.

Collaboration, Metacommunication, and Pluralistic Therapy

May 28, 2022 Critiques Integrative and Eclectic Practices Measures Metatherapeutic communication Policy Preferences Shared decision making 4 Comments

Jay Beichman, Counsellor/Psychotherapist in Private Practice The following thoughts about collaboration, metacommunication, and pluralistic therapy are drawn from my thesis How Counsellors and Psychotherapists Make Sense of Pluralistic Approaches to Therapy (2018). I write this in anticipation of this year’s Pluralistic Therapy Conference. In my view, pluralism is better thought…

ICPCP 2022 Conference Next Week!

May 24, 2022 CPD Information and Updates Training No Comments

Hope everyone’s getting excited for the conference next week! If you still need to get a ticket you can get one here. As a taster, you can find videos with our wonderful keynote speaker below;

Pluralism: Beyond Therapeutic Integration?

May 23, 2022 Critiques Cultural resources Epistemology Integrative and Eclectic Practices 1 Comment

Helen Smith, John McLeod, Brian Rodgers The following email dialogue, from the pluralistic practice network, explores some key questions about the nature of pluralism in therapy and its relationships to integrative and other practices. It begins with a question from a trainee: Helen Smith (18/5/2022) There was discussion about pluralism…

The Many Varied Forms of Knowledge in Pluralistic Practice

May 17, 2022 Arts therapies Co-production Epistemology Inner plurality Philosophy 2 Comments

Nicola Blunden, BSc Person-Centred Pluralistic Counselling, Metanoia Institute Pluralists often say that, instead of taking an either/or position, we take a both/and position in regards to knowledge. This is because we value flexibility and diversity, recognising that one particular claim to truth is unlikely to be universally valid. And we…

‘Scaffolding’ and ‘De-Specifying’: Deepening an Understanding of Clients’ Preferences through Conversational Analysis

April 7, 2022 Co-production Metatherapeutic communication Practice Preferences Shared decision making Training No Comments

Sarah Cantwell, @cantwels1 For better or worse, I’ve always had a drive towards trying to comprehend the fundamental structure of things. Unsurprisingly then, I majored in philosophy for my undergraduate degree, and I took my curiosity about underlying causes with me, through my studies in psychology and into my counselling…