Training and disillusion in counselling psychology: a psychoanalytic perspective

In this paper, I argue that Counselling Psychology's professional identification with pluralism poses significant emotional problems for trainees. An important factor in such problems may be the trainee's sense of disappointment and disillusion that the route to professional and personal self-transformation will not be achieved via a set of universal theoretical principles and established clinical 'rules'. I draw on recent psychoanalytic theory to suggest that the task facing trainees involves balancing pluralism, characterized as an 'external' third position, with an 'internal' third space indexing an awareness of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Maintaining a dialogical-dialectical perspective on these two positions allows for a creative space in which the trainee may be transformed from lay helper into professional counselling psychologist via a personal engagement with theoretical, clinical and academic material presented during training.