Gregory John Charles Nolan

• University of Leeds

According to the theory of predictive processing, understanding in the present involves non-consciously representing the immediate future, based on probabilistic inference shaped by learning from the past. This paper suggests links between this neuroscientific theory and the psychoanalytic concept of reverie – an empathic, containing attentional st...

The paper draws on recent research and the first author’s personal story to show what happens when the language difference between therapist and client is brought to mutual awareness in the therapy room. Individual lived experiences of migrant psychotherapists and counsellors and the issues that arise in therapy practice when the practitioners use...

Background: In contrast to dominant approaches to therapy research that look at outcomes and focus on large samples, another primary strand of research considers microphenomenal processes and focuses on small samples. This study contributes to the latter genre in regard to the implicit impact of language. Aim: This study aims to apply relational p...

Greg Nolan and William West reflect on the contemporary impact of rapid global social change on individual and collective cultural contexts of mental health, faith and spiritual sense-making. These issues remain of great importance as Western Europe, Turkey, Greece, Jordan and other countries experience the challenge of what is seen as mass migrati...

This article explores Levinas’s [1961/1969. Totality and infinity. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press; 1981/1997. Otherwise than being or beyond essence. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press] ideas on relational proximity in the face of the Other and, through meeting, the potential for intimate...

Background The researcher's reflexive use of self forms part of a well-established tradition in counselling and psychotherapy research. This paper reviews that tradition briefly, with particular reference to an approach known as ‘practitioner-based research’ that has developed from it. In this approach, researcher-practitioners use their therapeuti...

In this chapter I describe doctoral research into counselling and psychotherapy supervision, investigating meanings attributed to phenomena accompanying significant events that challenged therapists’ and supervisors’ sense-making, their world view and theoretical approaches in psychotherapy practice (Nolan, 2008a, 2008b). I set out to see how super...

Having read through the chapters of this book so far the reader could be forgiven for thinking: so what? I agree with many of the points raised by the authors of these chapters but how can I possibly reconfigure my pastoral care or counselling practice to take account of them; how can I possibly undertake a small or even a large research study that...

It will be apparent from the other chapters in this book some of the challenges faced by researchers exploring this territory or landscape. It is now increasingly accepted, certainly within qualitative research that the researcher is part of the research process and that one of the signs of good qualitative research is reading about the researcher...

This chapter is structured to explore aspects of what it can mean for a student to study and train as an individual therapist. Core elements of academic study, personal development, professional practice, clinical supervision and personal therapy can be largely similar, but there will be differences of focus in theoretical approach, organisational...

In this paper, we present a synthesis of two doctoral theses where links are made between the intersubjective, relational dynamics seen in clinical supervision, and applied in practice to a framework for emotional labor in prison nurses. We explore the nature of intersubjectivity, from nursing and psychotherapeutic perspectives, and discuss the way...

An evolving relational dynamic approach to psychotherapy and counselling education is described. Key themes integrated within the approach are the learning community and transformational relationships. Learning is a reciprocal change process involving students, teachers, supervisors and therapists in overlapping learning communities. Drawing on evi...