Simplicity: Pluralistic Reflections

July 26, 2025 Personal No Comments
Amanda McGuinness (amandanbentley3@outlook.com) completed a Sexual Health degree at the University of Central Lancashire in 2024, and is commencing a Master’s in Mental Health Nursing at Manchester Metropolitan University in Feb 2025. A previous urology nurse, she has always had an interest in sexual health and psychology and, more recently,…

Unlocking the Power of Client Feedback: The Journey of the Patient-Perceived Helpfulness of Measures Scale

October 16, 2023 Information and Updates Measures Metatherapeutic communication Research No Comments
Dr Gina Di Malta, Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy and Counselling, Open University The field of mental health and psychotherapy has seen significant advancements over the years with a constant quest to improve therapeutic outcomes. One critical aspect of this quest, and particularly from a pluralistic standpoint, is understanding the client’s…

‘Therapeutic Expertise’? Deliberately Curious From a Pluralistic Perspective!

September 20, 2023 Deliberate practice Research Training No Comments
Kerry-Jayne Lambert, University of Roehampton (lambertk@roehampton.ac.uk) Deliberate practice (DP) is argued to be at the ‘cutting edge’ of counselling and psychotherapy. It is a set of training methods aimed to support therapists to improve their clinical performance by isolating and focusing on specific skill subsets. This is considered similar to…

Making Learning Personal and Pluralistic: Giving Students What They Need, What They Want, and What Makes Sense

July 4, 2023 Cultural diversity Metatherapeutic communication Training 5 Comments
Dr Paul Galbally & Dr Fevronia Christodoulidi, BSc (Hons) Counselling, University of East London In our exciting new article in Teaching in Higher Education, we take a pluralistic perspective to demonstrate how academics at the University of East London—working with a diverse cohort of students in a collaborative, reflexive, and…

Under Development

June 16, 2023 Journal No Comments
This blog page is currently under development, and once completed will be used for discussions relating to the Pluralistic Practice Journal.

Enhancing Mental Health and Wellbeing Outcomes for Psychotherapy and Counselling through Idiographic Analysis: A Four-Quadrant Approach

May 31, 2023 Measures Research Shared decision making No Comments
Jenna Jacob, Research Lead, Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC) at Anna Freud I completed a Ph.D. by published works at the University of Roehampton in 2020. This is an alternative route to a Ph.D. qualification, where the research is already published and then the candidate pulls together a supporting piece…

Conference Programme for This Weekend!

May 30, 2023 No Category No Comments
This year’s theme is ‘Applied Pluralistic Therapy: What are we doing in practice?’ and will explore the impact of collaboration and taking our practices beyond the therapy room to tackle societal challenges. You can find tickets here, along with information about out keynote speakers Program for the day, and further…

The Radical Nature of Pluralism in Therapy

April 19, 2023 Critiques Person-centred Personal Philosophy Shared decision making Strengths and Resources Training 5 Comments
Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology, University of Roehampton One of the challenges to pluralism in therapy, over the years, is that we’re not really saying anything new. The challenge goes something like, ‘Yeah, pluralism, that’s great, but we’re all pluralists anyway. I’ve been doing pluralism for years.’ Being pluralistic,…

Submission Extension Deadline

March 29, 2023 CPD Information and Updates Networking Online No Comments
We are delighted to be able to extend the deadline for submissions for our June conference. The new deadline is the 28th April 2023. This year’s theme is ‘Applied Pluralistic Therapy: What are we doing in practice?’ and will explore the impact of collaboration and taking our practices beyond the…

Going for Accreditation as a Pluralistic Counsellor

March 23, 2023 Accreditation Practice Training 1 Comment
John Hills, Tricia Joyce, Julia McLeod, Nicola Blunden, James Schindler-Ord, and Gary Tebble. With thanks to: Kevin Kirwan (BACP) and Jenny McLintock (COSCA) If you are a pluralistic therapist preparing to apply for accreditation, you may be wondering about professional body attitudes towards pluralism, as an emerging approach within counselling…

Interview with Artificial Intelligence Bot ‘ChatGPT’ about Pluralistic Therapy… and It Writes Us a Poem, Too

December 14, 2022 Information and Updates Integrative and Eclectic Practices 4 Comments
Nicola Blunden, Metanoia Institute. Some of you may have seen the incredible new Artificial Intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, released recently for free use. I asked it to describe itself for this blog, and it replied: I am a large language model trained by OpenAI. I am designed to generate human-like text…

A response to Ong, Murphy, and Joseph regarding Cooper and McLeod’s exposition of pluralistic practice

November 9, 2022 Cultural diversity Epistemology Person-centred Philosophy Therapeutic approaches No Comments
Ross Crisp, ross.crispsy@gmail.com In their 2020 article, published in Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, Ong, Murphy, and Joseph claimed that Cooper and McLeod’s exposition of pluralistic practice embraces specific ontological ‘positions’ for different schools of psychotherapy. They argued, incorrectly, that it equates to an ‘ontological eclecticism’ that is incompatible with Carl…

International Conference on Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy Prize Winners

October 20, 2022 Arts therapies Children Co-production Cultural resources Deliberate practice Goals Information and Updates Preferences Research Young people 2 Comments
We are delighted to announce our conference prize winners from the last two years. You can find more information on each of the projects and links to watch the presentations below. You can watch all of the recordings from the conference here. Congratulations to all of our prize winners! Senior…

Pluralistic Practice: A Medical Anthropology Perspective

July 22, 2022 Anthropology Cultural diversity Epistemology 3 Comments
Dr Natalie Tobert, Medical Anthropologist, natalietobert@gmail.com , https://www.aethos.org.uk/   Multiple Narratives, Plural Perspectives One essential requirement of the discipline of medical anthropology is to honour multiple narratives around health and wellbeing. Research within medical anthropology always ensures plural perspectives are explored, so people are witnessed according to their own understandings, and…

Introducing ‘pluralistic sand-tray therapy’: Humanistic principles for working creatively with adult clients

July 19, 2022 Arts therapies Practice Therapeutic approaches No Comments
Doreen Fleet PhD, Visiting lecturer and PhD Research Supervisor, University of Chester; Author of Pluralistic sand-tray therapy (2022, Routledge) As a counsellor and trainer, I have always seen the benefit of using sand-tray with adult clients who want to work creatively. The client will select objects to symbolise their inner…

Is There A Need For Pluralistic CBT?

June 27, 2022 CBT Personal Practice Therapeutic approaches 2 Comments
Ashleigh Hennessy, 2nd Year BA (Hons) Student, studying Counselling and Therapeutic Practice at the University of South Wales Currently there is a lack of research and writing into the benefits of doing CBT within the pluralistic framework. Although Beck, as cited by Windy Dryden, emphasises the importance of collaboration within…