The journey to becoming a Practitioner Psychologist is filled with training, educational learning and practical elements. It all culminates in Doctorate level studies and a viva examination, where the candidate has to defend their thesis. In this week's blog, we meet Alice Horton-Smith, who recently successfully completed her viva examination and will soon join the field of Counselling Psychology, as a qualified member. Alice's experiences show the valuable input Practitioner Psychologists can make in working young children and their families. We are excited to follow Alice's career and eager to see her future contributions to the field of Applied Psychology.
My name is Alice Horton. I have recently passed the viva examination for my Counselling Psychology Doctorate studies and I hope to qualify in the next few months. Currently I am working as a trainee Counselling Psychologist in an Early Years Psychology team, working with children aged 0-5 with global developmental delay and their families.
I want to start by saying that I realise my privilege in having a “choice” about which Psychology route I went down given that counselling psychology is not funded. During my undergraduate degree in Psychology, I attended a lecture which introduced key critical voices in the medicalisation of distress such as Mary Boyle, Joanna Moncrieff and Lucy Johnstone. These perspectives gave me a language to articulate my own views on how to understand distress. The person who delivered this lecture was a Counselling Psychologist. This led me to want to find out more. I completed my undergraduate degree at UWE which also runs a Professional Doctorate in Counselling Psychology, so I feel lucky that I was exposed to Counselling Psychology at the time I was considering next steps in my career. My parent’s neighbour is also a Counselling Psychologist and was always happy to lend an ear and answer any questions I had about the career route. I was particularly interested in Counselling Psychology’s Humanistic value base, the thoroughness of therapeutic element through completing 450 therapy hours during training, a commitment to the use of self and the need for personal work through an emphasis on personal therapy during training and the experiential nature of the training. I was particularly drawn to UWE’s overarching relational psychodynamic approach as its core modality.
The main part of my current role is offering therapy input to parents. I am also currently developing a dads’ support group. When I qualify I will be moving into the Band 7 psychologist post in the team and my role will expand to include clinical supervision for other staff members, alongside opportunities to offer consultancy. This role fits well with Counselling Psychology as it combines a variety of approaches such as Humanistic-, Systemic-, Third wave approaches and community psychology principles. This sits alongside Counselling Psychology’s Humanistic value base, commitment to social justice and its focus on strengths rather than deficits. However, the therapeutic relationship remains at the core of the work that I do.
Alongside my clinical work I have recently had the opportunity to offer lecturing on my thesis topic (prescription rights for Psychologists), to Doctoral trainees. I hope to publish a condensed version of my thesis in the near future. In 2017 when considering what to research for my thesis, I knew I was interested in understanding the medicalisation of distress as this is what ultimately drew me to the profession in the first place. Around this time there had been mutterings of prescribing rights for Psychologists. This provoked an unrelated discussion with my supervisor about what this would mean for Psychologists and clients, how this would clash (in my perspective) with the philosophical underpinnings of Counselling Psychology and how this development may change the profession. This led to the research question “what are UK Counselling- and Clinical Psychologist’s views on gaining prescription rights in the UK?”. I was particularly interested in this question in relation to mental health and psychiatric drugs. I utilised a qualitative survey to collect a breadth of views and undertook a thematic analysis to analyse the data. I have recently passed my viva and I hope to publish a shortened article of my research in due course.
Whilst I am early on in my career as a Counselling Psychologist, I have a wealth of pre-Doctoral experience, mainly in the field of Adult Mental Health, and I feel excited about the varied opportunities available to me in the future.
Thank you Alice for sharing your experience and we look forward to your next steps in Counselling Psychology!
We hope reading about Alice's journey has been interesting and helpful to you. Please get in touch if you had any comments or suggestions.
Remember the aim of this blog is to create a community of Applied Psychologists, a space where we can come together to celebrate diverse achievements, understand experiences and most importantly, learn from each other. After all, the journey towards a Psychology career is often varied and full of a myriad of twists and turns, and knowing others have walked a similar path, could often offer inspiration and strength.
Do you know any inspirational Practitioner Psychologists? Why don't you get in touch with your story or perhaps send us an entry based on those who inspired your own.
Kind regards,
The Pathways team.
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