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European Journal of
Psychotherapy & Counselling
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On becoming a psychotherapist:
Technologies (manualisation and
e-learning) versus communities
of practice
a
Del Loewenthal
a
Department of Psychology , Roehampton University,
Whitelands College , Holybourne Avenue, London , UK
Published online: 30 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Del Loewenthal (2012) On becoming a psychotherapist: Technologies

(manualisation and e-learning) versus communities of practice, European Journal of
Psychotherapy & Counselling, 14:4, 313-316, DOI: 10.1080/13642537.2012.734462

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 European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling
Vol. 14, No. 4, December 2012, 313–316

EDITORIAL
On becoming a psychotherapist: Technologies (manualisation
and e-learning) versus communities of practice

Mentalisation, if nothing else, can be seen strategically as an excellent

innovation to enable psychoanalysis to survive in an audit culture. It can be
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considered as mirroring those features of CBT, which may have led to the
perception of CBT’s success in providing a far cheaper way of training and
carrying out the therapy which importantly, at least at first sight, lends itself to
randomised control trials which current forces in our society use for
legitimization. It could be further claimed that such simplifications do much
to take away from unnecessary professional mystification. Thus mentalisation,
CBT and any other approaches that can be manualised in this way can be seen
as both economical and effective in training technicians. Indeed, mentalisation,
which started with treating people with Borderline Personality Disorder
(Bateman & Fonagy, 2004), has since expanded in many directions (Bateman &
Fonagy, 2011).
On the other hand, there is Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phrase, which I am fond
of quoting, stating that sometimes if one takes away the mystery, one takes
away the thing itself. Whilst one might argue that such manualised approaches
as mentalisation don’t in fact take away the mystery, but rather help you stay
more with it, our concerns might still be heightened regarding this
technologising of the psychological therapies if we consider further the
nature of psychotherapeutic knowledge. Surely in order to be psychological
therapists, we need the time and space to consider not so much explicit
knowledge, but what Polanyi (1967) terms ‘tacit knowledge’. Tacit knowledge
cannot be taught and learnt but can be imparted and acquired. In some ways
similarly, Oakeshott (1962) distinguishes ‘practical’ from ‘technical’ knowl-
edge. Such practical knowledge cannot really be learnt just through a manual,
it requires the face to face contact.
More recently Lave and Wenger (1991) spoke of this as a community of
practice that focuses on social participation in a community. Here learning
occurs when the student acquires knowledge, not only from the master, but
also from ‘advanced apprentices’ and ‘fellow novices’. Such communities of
practice have previously been with us in professional education, for example
learning communities with a stress far more on equality were very prevalent
through humanistic influences on learning in the second half of the twentieth
century (Heron, 1974). Surely such learning, which is socially situated, is not

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 314 Editorial

only the basis of the psychological therapists’ development, but perhaps also,
as a result of the therapy, the client’s/patient’s development.
Such learning can never take place through just a technical manualisation,
however sophisticated the electronic means. We are of course in an era where
education has undergone enormous change (e.g. in medicine, see Morris &
Blaney, 2010). Working patterns have indeed changed and led to less face to
face contact – we are far more likely to be looking at separate digital screens in
our work and leisure time than ever before.
There are innovations, through using collaborative websites, to create new
virtual communities of practice (Boulos, Marambam, & Wheeler, 2006), which
attempt to enable the sharing of peer to peer generated knowledge between all
levels of the community (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). However, such ‘blended
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learning’ (Littlejohn & Pegler, 2007) still appears to be best when it is based on
existing face to face communities of practice (Sharpe & Oliver, 2007).
People who are psychological therapists are very fortunate to still have the
main approach in most cases to their basic learning, through a community of
practice involving the face to face contact of their teaching, their supervision
and in their individual and/or group therapy. However, there are increasing
pressures on this. There is a greater expectation that learning can take place at
home, at work or on the move. In different ways, most of the psychotherapy
bodies in the UK have reduced the time people need to be in therapy to qualify
(Loewenthal, forthcoming). And there is less of general sense of community
which makes it all the more difficult for people to be able to get together to
form learning or any other type of communities. But are not these even more
reasons why manualisation should never be the starting point for our learning?
It would be far better for the individuals and communities we serve, if we start
with both practice (Snell & Loewenthal, 2011) and communities of learning,
rather than theory and learning technologies.
Our first paper for this general issue, ‘The effect of psychodrama on people
living with HIV/AIDS’ by Karabilgin, Gökengin, Doğaner and Gökengin from
Turkey, explores the effects of psychodrama on the life functioning of people
living with HIV positive status through a mixed methods study. This interesting
study explores how to help people living with HIV/AIDS to gain insight, to get
free of the burden of negative feelings (anger, shame, guilt, fear of death) and to
cope with the difficulties in their inner world, their family and their
environment.
The second paper ‘Nature as therapist: Integrating permaculture with
mindfulness and acceptance-based therapy in the Danish Healing Forest
Garden Nacadia’ by Corazon, Stigsdotter, Steen and Rasmussen explores the
framework of an experimental project aimed at developing nature-based
therapy and is an excellent example of an environmental therapy which
proceeds by bringing together both a therapeutic and an environmental
framework.
The next paper is John Osborne’s exploration of the ‘Existential and
psychological aspects of the transition to retirement’. Here the author considers
how the extended nature of retirement has created numerous psychological
issues now that retirement may sometimes be longer than the time spent in a
 Editorial 315

work life. This innovative paper attempts to blend some of the fundamental
themes of existentialism with the psychological issues that occur prior to and in
retirement.
The fourth paper entitled ‘Increased participation in the life context, a
qualitative study of clients’ experiences of problems and changes after
psychotherapy’ is by Wilhelmsson-Göstas, Wiberg and Kjellin from Sweden.
The authors’ excellent aim is two-fold: to gain a deeper understanding of both
the participants’ problems that led them to seek help through psychotherapy,
and of similarities and variations in changes of these problems related to the
experience of either cognitive behavioural therapy or psychodynamic
psychotherapy.
Our last paper, before our book reviews, focuses on research and is by
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Marjo Romakkaniemi from Finland on ‘Service users’ perceptions of shared

agency in mental health services’. The aim is to analyse the healing and
hindering elements in psychotherapy and counselling. They refer to the concept
of ‘shared agency’, a concept which has been widely discussed in contemporary
philosophy of action, but not in the same way as in psychotherapy and
counselling settings. The findings open up useful questions and challenges for
the mental health services regarding the felt sense of ‘shared agency’ reported
by service users.
There is also the possibility that what in this last paper of the European
papers is termed ‘shared agency’ may have some similarities with the concept of
communities of practice. Strange, isn’t it that both the training of those
working in the talking therapies and our effectiveness could well depend on a
tacit dimension that by definition cannot be directly talked about!

Del Loewenthal
Department of Psychology, Roehampton University
Whitelands College, Holybourne Avenue, London, UK
d.loewenthal@roehampton.ac.uk

References

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personality disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 18, 36–51.
Bateman, A., & Fonagy, P. (2011). Handbook of mentalizing in mental health practice.
Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.
Boulos, M., Marambam, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new
generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and
education. BMC Medical Education, 41, Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.
com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf
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conversation of possibilities. Proceedings of the online learning and teaching
conference, Brisbane, pp. 31–38.
Heron, J. (1974). The concept of a peer learning community. Guildford: HPRP,
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 316 Editorial

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