Philosophy – Pluralistic Practice

The Radical Nature of Pluralism in Therapy

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,…

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…

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…

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…

Pluralism as Diversity in Practice: But What about Indigenous and Transpersonal Approaches?

December 9, 2021 Critiques Cultural diversity Cultural resources Person-centred Personal Philosophy Politics Spirituality No Comments

Joe Bartholomew, trainee psychotherapist, Brighton Therapy Centre; radicalcultureint@gmail.com; www.radicalculture.co.uk On my journey as a trainee therapist I’ve previously worked as a trainee NHS psychological wellbeing practitioner (PWP) within an IAPT service. This involved using a CBT model, as well as CBT based interventions when working with clients. More recently in…

Do Clients Want What They Want? Understanding Preferences Through the Directional Framework

April 8, 2021 Philosophy Practice Research Shared decision making 1 Comment

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton ‘The problem with pluralistic therapy is that clients do not know what they want.’ This criticism of pluralism, levelled even by advocates of a person-centred approach, has many parallels in the field of social and political theory. Here, ‘preference utilitarianism’, articulated…

Metamodernism and Pluralism

October 9, 2020 Cultural resources Philosophy 1 Comment

Marie-Clare Murphie, 2nd Year PhD student at Abertay University, Dundee, researching the processes and outcomes of pluralistic therapy (1206416@uad.ac.uk) How do you define the undefinable? I have been mulling this question over for the past year, as I try to develop an adherence scale for pluralistic therapy as part of…

Pluralistic Counselling for Sight Loss

August 3, 2020 Personal Philosophy Practice Research Training 6 Comments

Dr Mhairi Thurston, Senior Lecturer in Counselling at Abertay University I am a blind pluralistic counselling academic with an irrational fear of writing. That blank page and the deafening voice of my inner critic, telling me no one is interested in what I have to say and that other people…

Bread and Jam and Sparkling Wine? Can I be Person-Centred and Pluralistic?

May 12, 2020 Arts therapies Person-centred Personal Philosophy Practice Therapeutic approaches 11 Comments

Ani de la Prida, creative arts counsellor, psychotherapist, founder of the Association for Person Centred Creative Arts, and lecturer at the University of East London I have been a passionate person-centred therapist and trainer for many years. A couple of years ago I attended the pluralistic conference in London, and…

Arguing the Difference While Rome Burns: Perhaps Pluralism Can Help?

April 29, 2020 Personal Philosophy Practice Therapeutic approaches 4 Comments

Andrew Reeves, Associate Professor in the Counselling Professions and Mental Health, University of Chester Like many others working in the psychological therapies I have, over my 30-plus years of being a practitioner, been immersed in the diversity of therapeutic approaches. Humanistic, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural – to name the loose umbrella headings…

Why We Should Acknowledge and Accommodate Clients’ Wants and Needs

March 14, 2020 Critiques Person-centred Philosophy Preferences Shared decision making No Comments

Jonny Hutchinson, Trainee Counselling Psychologist, University of Roehampton This blog is a response to one of the points raised in Ong, Murphy, and Joseph’s (2020) critique of the pluralistic approach to counselling and psychotherapy. For reasons of space, I’ve chosen to address just one particular aspect of their argument, but…

Leadership and Solidity in a Time of Crisis

March 11, 2020 Leadership Philosophy Politics 7 Comments

Marcella Finnerty, College President, IICP Core to our training as psychotherapists is to trust in the process, to sit with not knowing. To stay calm with the messy vulnerability and uncertainty of life. We are taught to meet and greet the most difficult of feelings, to walk with clients on their…

Philosophical Foundations of Pluralism

February 19, 2020 Philosophy 2 Comments

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton The recent critique of pluralistic therapy by Ong et al. (2020) has made me think that it might be useful to try and unpack further the philosophical roots of the approach, at least as I see it. John (McLeod) always used…

Shaking the Pluralistic Kaleidoscope on a Central Asian Campus

February 17, 2020 Arts therapies Cultural diversity Philosophy Research Young people 2 Comments

Robin Higgins MA, University Counsellor and Well-Being Consultant, University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Campus Well-Being blog: https://tenthstreetdinner.wordpress.com/ Pluralism is a process and not a product. It is a mentality, a way of looking at a diverse and changing world. A pluralistic environment is a kaleidoscope that history shakes…

A Soulful Solstice

December 17, 2019 Personal Philosophy Politics Shared decision making 2 Comments

Lynne Gabriel, School of Psychological and Social Sciences, York St John University For me, the winter solstice is an important time for simply being, for reflecting on the year and for heralding the return of the light. I am usually to be found winding down at this point; feeling mellow,…

Pluralism: Uniting the opposites

November 12, 2019 Personal Philosophy No Comments

Richard Knight, School of Psychological and Social Sciences, York St John University, Lord Mayor’s Walk, York, YO31 7EX It’s always been an item on my bucket list to visit Gatecrasher (a club night that became popular in the 90s and early 2000s). Some of you will remember it as the…

What is the pluralistic approach, and how is it different from integrative and eclectic practices?

July 15, 2019 Integrative and Eclectic Practices Philosophy 7 Comments

Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton The pluralistic approach to therapy is something that John McLeod and I first started to articulate back in 2007, with our first book in 2011, and a handbook with Windy Dryden in 2017. John and I both came from person-centred backgrounds,…

Working together

March 7, 2019 Philosophy Practice No Comments

By John McLeod I think it is important to be very careful around describing pluralistic therapy as ‘client-lead’. This is not wrong, but neither is it sufficient. It is correct in that pluralistic therapy is based on an assumption that to be human is to have sense of directionality (or…

Meta-theories

March 7, 2019 Philosophy No Comments

By John Mcleod If you look at the history of how therapy has developed, it is clear that it comprises a fairly continuous set of arguments around the relative importance of psychological constructs such as cognition, emotion, behaviour, relationships, and biology. These debates are fascinating but in the end have…

The pluralistic framework builds on pre-existing integrative approaches

March 7, 2019 Philosophy Therapeutic approaches No Comments

By John Mcleod The pluralistic model can be viewed as a kind of meta-perspective or meta-theory. There already exist many therapy theories/approaches (e.g., CBT, psychodynamic, person-centred, etc). A pluralistic framework offers a navigation system for finding a way through these existing models. For anyone new to pluralistic practice, it can…