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Integrative trends in counseling education

Theory-and-Practice-of-Counseling-and-Psychotherapy-Corey-Gerald-9780495102083This semester I’m taking a “Counseling Theory and Practice” course as part of my graduate training. One of my big worries going into the program was that I wouldn’t be able to situate myself within the “mainstream” discourse in the field. When I graduated from college in the early 90s, it seemed as if there weren’t any conventional psychology graduate programs that acknowledged and appreciated an integral or integrative approach to mental health, which was one of the reasons I ended up studying East/West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. I thought of myself as being on the cutting edge back in those days, as one of the few who could see through all the reductionistic b.s. of “mainstream” or “conventional” psychology. And there was probably a little bit of truth to that. It’s only been in the last ten years or so that topics once thought of as woo-woo, like mindfulness, have been appreciated and embraced by mental health professionals outside of a few outposts in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts. But today, assuming the textbooks we’re using at New Mexico State University are any indication of wider trends, it seems that a full-on biopsychosocial, integrative approach to counseling theory and practice is at long last having its day. Here’s a quote from Chapter 1 of Gerald Corey’s Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy:

To understand human functioning, it is imperative to account for the physical, emotional, mental, social, cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions. If any of these facets of human experience is neglected, a theory is limited in explaining how we think, feel, and act.

Shit, that sounds an awful lot like the blurb on the front page of this website! Could it be that this integral health stuff is no longer such a radical idea?!?! Perhaps I’ll have to let go of this notion that I’m part of the avant-garde! I can live with that, I suppose… :O)

My other textbook, Hackney and Cormier’s The Professional Counselor, has also alluded to an integral-ish perspective right off the bat, within the first few pages:

Each individual is an ecological existence within a cultural context, living with others in an ecological system. One’s intrapersonal dimensions are interdependent with others who share one’s life space.

Sounds a lot like the “woo” I studied in San Francisco back in the day! I can only hope this integrative vibe continues as the semester unfolds. It’ll sure make having to read hundreds of pages per week a lot less painful.

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Back to school

My wife and I are getting settled here in Las Cruces, NM. She turns 35 today, in fact, and she’s loving her new job as assistant professor. I’ve had some trouble securing gainful employment myself and, aside from a tutoring gig that’s about to come to a close, I’ve been embracing my role as house-spouse and otherwise ruminating on the next steps in my professional and creative life. Next month I will begin (yet again!) life as a part-time graduate student in the Counseling and Guidance program at New Mexico State University. I spent fifteen years or so working as a mental health professional in bachelor’s-level positions (my master’s degree in East-West Psychology is non-clinical), and it’s been a full five years now since my last mental health job. Strangely, I’m not feeling at all nervous about going back to school. At 41, I’ve been around the block a few times, and if anything my confidence level is bordering on mild arrogance. That’s what I need to look out for, I think — the (erroneous) belief that I already know everything that’s worth knowing about counseling and mental health. I’ve become somewhat set in my ways, at least in terms of a general philosophical orientation, and I need to be sure I take in the perspectives of others with an open mind. It will be interesting to see to what degree students will be encouraged to think critically about the field, and likewise how much pressure there might be to accept the status quo as gospel.

I remember how surprised I was to discover how credulous my coworkers seemed to be (at my last job) when it came to accepting information from “the experts” in the field. For instance, I never met a single person who expressed a critical thought about how diagnostic criteria were developed for psychiatric manuals, or who questioned the validity or usefulness of the disease model of addiction. There were awkward moments, many of them, when I knew in my heart of hearts that the information being presented to patients was just plain wrong, or else it was being presented without regard to appropriate context. I’ve often wondered whether or not I’d be able to thrive in a mainstream graduate program, given some of my rather iconoclastic positions about the nature of well-being and mental health. I’m about to find out!

Hopefully, my experience of the program will inspire me to write and reflect more often. Despite my tendency to be an arrogant jackass, deep down I know I have everything to learn. Working face to face with human beings who are suffering tends to humble a would-be know-it-all pretty quickly. This will undoubtedly be a challenging and transformative couple of years as I move through the program toward my (second) master’s degree and at least one counseling license. I’m ready to rock and roll!