ABSTRACT
For us, professionalism has to do with both macro and micro factors. At the broader level, we would stand for the qualities of humility and awareness, as well as the balancing of alternative conceptualizations. We would support transparency and collaboration, both between colleague groups and with clients, supervisees and trainees. Our commitment to an integrative standpoint has arisen from the recognition that there is no one best way to offer help for psychological distress and that we need continuously to acquaint ourselves with relevant theory and research, as well as being interested in how new ®ndings relate to our own practices and teaching activities. We also need to attend to the way that we organize theory and practice into a form that is coherent. At the more micro level there is the ongoing attention to such factors as boundary management, conscientious attention to the day to day, and a genuine interest in the quality of service offered to the client, whether in our own practices or in the context of supervision and teaching. In our view, professionalism is signi®cantly enhanced by a commitment to re¯ection in action. Donald SchoÈn in particular (1983) has developed some signi®cant ideas based on different levels of learning (Bateson, 1972) and has applied these to professional settings in a way that we ®nd especially interesting for those working in the therapeutic setting, whether as counsellors, psychotherapists or supervisors. Bolton (2005) also offers us some practical ideas on the development and maintenance of re¯ective practice in our work, highlighting in particular the qualities of mutual respect, an authoritative approach grounded in a commitment to quality, and a genuine interest in and openness to the end product in our work. We do not see these ideas as pertaining only to our own approach, but as a fundamental set of generic `metacompetencies' that are important whatever approach is being adopted.
