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This engaging and accessible text explores the key assumptions, main theoretical ideas and principles of practice behind psychodynamic counselling. Looking at evidence-based practice, supervision, and the different stages of counselling, this new edition continues to be a valuable text for counsellors and psychotherapists from all disciplines.

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This key book in the Basic Texts in Counselling and Psychotherapy series is an authoritative and accessible introduction to psychodynamic counselling and its basic principles. The author, Laurence Spurling, is a leading figure in the discipline and, here, he examines the underlying psychodynamic approach, its main theoretical ideas and principles of practice, the techniques associated with it and ways of thinking about the conduct of counselling.

Looking at two major themes in particular, namely the involvement of counsellors working with clients with severe emotional and psychological problems and the influence of organisational settings on counselling work, this book is an essential guide for students and practitioners of counselling or psychotherapy, along with those from other professions, such as nurses and teachers, who are called upon to use counselling skills in their work.

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1. The Basic Principles of Therapeutic Practice and the Concept of Containment.- 2. The Setting.- 3. Theory I: The Developmental Point of View and the Oedipus Complex.- 4. Theory II: The Internal World and the Depressive and Paranoid-Schizoid Modes of Experience.- 5. Transference and its Manifestations.- 6. Working in the Transference.- 7. Phases of the Counselling Work.- 8. Working with More Disturbed Clients.- 9. The Organisational Framework.- 10. Working with Difference

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Laurence Spurling initially trained as a social worker, and now works as a Senior Lecturer in Counselling at Birkbeck College, University of London, as a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist in the National Health Service, and in private practice as a psychotherapist.

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