I, the psychotherapist

Prominent influences in my professional development as a psychotherapist

Early to mid 20s - Psychology at university

Cognitive behavioral therapy

Psychology as an empirical science

Early to mid 20s  

Transactional analysis and Gestalt therapy - Bob and Mary Goulding

Psychoanalytic approach to child psychotherapy - Julia Solomon

Late 20s - early 30s

Gestalt therapy - Jim Simkin

Bioenergetics - Michael Conant 

30s until present

Study in a variety of modalities

Particularly transference based therapies

Psychoanalysis

Rebirthing (Traditional)

Family therapy of Milton H. Erikson

Other training over the years which has influenced me in particular

Ellyn Bader - Couples therapy

Stan and Ruth Kaplan - Sex therapy

Sue Helfgott - Drug and alcohol therapy

Lanktons - NLP


On the job learning that has impacted me significantly
Singapore Airlines - Organizational psychology
St John Ambulance Service - Trauma and trauma counselling
Association of the Relatives and Friends of the Mentally Ill - Chronic schizophrenia, bipolar and borderline personality 
Acacia Prison - Antisocial personality, schizophrenia, narcissistic personality, drug and alcohol problems, methadone as a treatment, suicidality and self harm.

Doing cotherapy with Mary Goulding in the early 1990s

I was recently asked by a supervisee what approach I use and I could not answer the question. I used to be able to answer that question and was surprised that I felt I no longer could. I felt I could no longer satisfactorily identify an approach that would define me as a counselor or psychotherapist. Initially this concerned me as it seemed a retrograde step. I had gone from knowing who I was to not knowing who I was. Needless to say I subsequently pondered this question for some time.

I can state the practicalities of what I do with a client and I can cite the influences on myself as a counselor, as I have done above. Perhaps that means I am now eclectic in my approach. I have never liked the idea of being an eclectic counselor as it seems to be a collection of a lot of things but not really any of them. It seems to lack a substance.

As I thought about the question in subsequent days, I wondered what had changed such that a question I once could answer, I no longer could. In my musing I calculated that I would have done between forty to fifty thousand hours of counseling in my thirty two years of working. It seems logical that if one does a task for that long then it stops being something that you do and becomes part of who you are. You have done the task so many times it becomes second nature, ‘in your bones’ and part of your character.

This idea then allowed me to answer the question. I am a person, Tony White and there are many parts or aspects of me, one being a counselor. When I go to work I am simply being me. This is what the client gets, me the person, with the counselor being part of me. I think I have shifted from being a counselor who happens to be named Tony, to being Tony who also happens to be a counselor. I now have some kind of answer should I be asked that question again. A two tiered answer, the theoretical approach I use with the practicalities of counseling and a more deeper understanding of myself as a counsellor as being part of my perception of who I am.

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