A Portfolio of Academic, Therapeutic Practice and Research Work Including an Investigation Into the Role of Technology Within the Therapeutic Relationship Using Discursive and Phenomenological Studies of Text-Based Online Counselling for Problem Gambling.

This portfolio contains a selection of the work completed and submitted for the Practitioner Doctorate in Psychotherapeutic and Counselling Psychology at the University of Surrey. It is structured in three sections called dossiers. The academic dossier contains three academic essays. The first is on the concepts of containment, engagement and psychological mindedness. The second considers a presenting problem called depersonalisation from a psychodynamic perspective. The third essay considers interpersonal processes and CBT. The second dossier relates to my clinical work and includes a description of the three clinical placements I undertook during the course. It also includes the final clinical paper which explains how I have come to understand the relationship of theory, research and practice. The third dossier relates to the research conducted whilst on the course. My research area is the role of technology within the therapeutic relationship. There is a broad literature review on the role of technology within the therapeutic relationship. There then follows a discursive study on the sessions of text-based online counselling for ‘problem gamblers’. Finally, there is an interpretative phenomenological analysis study on the experience of five counsellors who were purposively recruited from a charity that provides text-based counselling for ‘problem gamblers’