ABSTRACT

Those three introductory sentences could stand as a metaphor for counselling training. They reflect a number of complex inter-relationships, potential conflicts, competing demands and possible – or impossible – paradoxes. Similarly, the writing of this book has spanned a time filled with exhilarating beginnings and sad endings, both personal and organisational. The department in which our Counselling Unit exists is to close within the year; my mother has died, as have the mothers of three of my close tutoring colleagues; and numerous individual students on many of our courses have faced the costs of unemployment, relationship breakup or losses of various kinds. Yet, we have begun new courses, engaged with fresh student groups, struggled to capture and express creatively old and new ideas. There have been many innovations in trainees’ work settings; at least three students and two tutors have also produced babies, while others have made life-enhancing decisions and risked change of all kinds. In the face of such emotionally intense, personal and professional challenges, it is difficult to sustain energy, commitment, personal integrity, ethical soundness and appropriate focus – yet that is what counselling trainers and trainees have to do.