Understanding Person-Centred Counselling: A Personal Journey

Christine has been a person-centred practitioner for 20 years; she works privately as a counsellor/psychotherapist and supervisor and as a trainer at LC&CTA. LC&CTA, a private counsellor training organisation, was co-founded by Christine and Juanita Harriot in 2007 with the support of Dame Ruth Silver when the Counsellor Training department at Lewisham College was disbanded. Over the years Christine has trained and supervised over 300 practitioners, and has worked with a diversity of clients from all walks of life. Christine and Juanita have encouraged their students to participate in research and LC&CTA students have been successfully selected to present Research Posters at the BACP National Research Conference for seven consecutive years; winning two Conference Research Awards. Her own research work has focused on 'The Other Characteristic'/'Relational Depth' and she has presented four research papers at national level. Christine has a chequered history, much of which she shares in this book to experientially example person-centred theory. She lived in Germany for six years and in her late twenties she back-packed across three continents, settling in Nepal for a year; her encounters with human difference has greatly increased her love of diversity and varied cultures in all their manifestations. With Juanita and their team of associates, Christine is dedicated to providing access to quality practitioner training to students from all backgrounds. She profoundly believes that a counsellor's practical ability to process and be an effective practitioner are of far greater importance than his or her ability to academically demonstrate an understanding of theory; however, she does not underestimate the importance of the latter, especially in relation to clinical practice.