A Portfolio of Academic, Therapeutic Practice and Research Work Including an Investigation Into Maintaining Recovery From Eating Disorders.

This portfolio comprises part of a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at the University of Surrey. Within this portfolio is a collection of academic, clinical and research work and it is organised into three sections: the academic, the therapeutic practice and the research dossier. The academic dossier includes three theoretical papers. The first paper explores therapists’ countertransference when working with children, and discusses the variations in countertransference when working therapeutically with child compared to adult clients. Sustaining this relational focus, the second essay considers the relationship between transference, countertransference and CBT, and explores how to use these concepts in a CBT context to understand and work through ruptures in the therapeutic relationship. The final essay presents an existential-phenomenological understanding of anorexia nervosa, and discusses how CBT frameworks understand and work therapeutically with this presentation. The therapeutic practice dossier presents an overview of my clinical work, the placements, the types of supervision and the client populations that I have worked with during my training. At the end of the therapeutic practice dossier is my final clinical paper, which details my personal and professional journey to becoming a counselling psychologist. Finally, the research dossier contains three research papers. The first, presented as a literature review, adopts a critical approach towards the medical model to consider the existing literature on anorexia nervosa. The second paper, in the form of a research report, draws from the literature review and explores women’s experiences of choosing recovery from anorexia. Influenced by the findings from my second research paper, the third research paper identifies, characterises and evaluates the role of life events in maintained recovery from eating disorders