Woolfe, R., Strawbridge, S., Douglas, B. & Dryden, W. (2009). Handbook of Counselling Psychology, 3.ed. London: SAGE.  Del I, II og IV.

Counselling Psychology: psychodynamic (unconscious dynamics which creates distress and experiences), cognitive-behavioural therapy (learned behaviour and the ability to think about it), humanism (subjective experiences, personal meaning and self-esteem) and postmodernism (social constructions of identity and experiences, systematic thinking).

Counselling psychology is a discipline distant from psychoanalysis, behaviourism and clinical psychology. It has its roots in humanism and its focus on the individuals subjectivity and the therapeutic relationship.

Object-relation psychoanalysis is important for counselling psychology – specially their practical methods like the therapeutic transference and mirroring.

Counselling psychology has a post-modern perspective. It has a pluralistic model of training and practice where no specific theoretic approach is prominent.

Object-relation focuses on the clients earlier relations and the patterns of relating that was created since. It tries to help the client develop new ways of relating by organising the memory and meaning in the interpersonal context of the therapeutic relationship.

Implicit memory, procedural knowledge about how to do things must be changed in the therapeutic relationship by a common acknowledgement between the subjects during a process of self-organising, disorganising, repairing and joint re-organising.

Both attachment and mental representations is psychoanalytic phenomenon’s, which are important for counselling psychology. The ability to create relations is believed to be created during attachment by mental representations as well as the ability of mentalization and empathy is created during secure attachment. In neurobiological perspective this is seen by the formation of mirror neurons through the development.

Outcome research is very difficult in counselling psychology and psychotherapy as randomised controlled trials, the golden standard, have problems with the external validity. A suggestion is to examine the psychodynamic outcome from neuroimaging studies that study the different synaptic relations, despite the fact that there is no agreement about this method yet.