In response to Adam Osborne being struck off as a psychiatrist Amanda Williamson, a campaigner for better regulation in counselling, recently Tweeted:

It’s a point that deserves a much better response than I was able to squeeze into a tweet of my own, so here it is.

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There’s a tradition of painting clowns’ faces on eggs, it started in the 1940s as a hobby of one of the founding members of Clowns International and it developed into a register. When a new clown joined an artist painted the face he performed with on an egg which was then added to the register. No two clowns we’re allowed to have the same face, so if your face resembled one already on the register you were advised on how to change it so you had your own unique face.
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It’s worth looking closely at the advice we’re often given in counselling training to not use too many closed questions. Some closed questions encourage your client to reflect deeply, “How do would you rate your anxiety on a scale of one to ten?” may well challenge your client to look objectively and closely at his feelings; and some clients respond to closed question in much the same way as to open ones, answering the explicit enquiry and then immediately exploring the issues around their answer.
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Imagine you’re on the shores of a lake trying to spear fish; you know that you are normally a good shot but for some reason your spears keep missing; you notice the way a bough that dips below the surface of the water looks like it’s bent and you realise that the same illusion would make the fish appear to be to in a different position to where they really are. So there you are, you have realised the world isn’t as you perceive it to be, what can you do about it?
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