Working with parentification: implications for clients and counselling psychologists

This paper concerns the concept of parentification, whereby children take on inappropriate parental roles. A brief theoretical overview is presented, showing that parentification has important implications for understanding both clients' and counselling psychologists' experiences. Specific ways of assessing adult clients who were parentified as children are described, focusing on parentification criteria and typical profiles. This is followed by a description of a deparentifying process, including exploring shame-based experiences, resisting splitting and working with projective identification. These discussions are illustrated by examples from an anonymized case study of a client who was parentified as a child. Finally, the paper includes a discussion of possible dilemmas and difficulties that may arise when parentified clients and parentified counselling psychologists work together. Although previous literature has discussed parentification separately for counselling psychologists and clients, this paper is unique in its discussion of the interaction between the client's and counselling psychologist's experiences of parentification and the corresponding impact on the therapeutic alliance. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of personal therapy and supportive working environments for the well-being of counselling psychologists and consequently that of their clients.