Existential Therapy: An Introduction - Prof Mick Cooper

Welcome to the Weekend University podcast, and this is your host, Nile Anhebert. The Weekend University was set up to make the best psychology lectures available to the general public. To do this, we organized lecture days once per month for attendees to get a full day of talks from the UK's leading psychologists, authors, and university professors.

Our podcast features in-depth interviews with their speakers, so you can learn more about their work. To keep updated on upcoming events and new lectures, you can sign up for the mailing list at the weekend university. com.

In this episode, we're joined by Micky Cooper. Mick is an internationally recognized author, trainer, and consultant in the fields of humanistic, existential, and pluralistic therapies. He is a chartered psychologist and professor of counseling psychology at the University of Roehampton.

His books include "Existential Therapies," "Working at Relational Depth," and "Counseling and Psychotherapy," and most recently, "Working with Goals in Psychotherapy and Counseling," which was published by Oxford University Press in March of this year. In 2014, Mick received the Carl Rogers Mid-Career Award from the American Psychological Association. He is a fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Academy of Social Sciences.

You can follow him on Twitter at @MickCooper77. Enjoy the show! To get started, could you tell me how you would describe yourself to someone you're meeting for the first time, whom you've never met before—both as a professional and as a person?

Well, as a professional, I'd probably say I'm a pluralistic practitioner. I work in a pluralistic way, which means that I utilize a wide range of different methods that I've been trained in over the years to try and tailor my practice to the client. As a person, I would say I'm a father of four, a professor of counseling psychology, and probably lots more things that may not be relevant to this podcast, so I'll stop there.

Okay, and you mentioned that you use a pluralistic approach in your work. Could you tell us a bit more about that and why you use this approach? Sure!

The term "pluralism" was one that John McLeod and I developed about 10-15 years ago to describe a way of thinking about therapy that brings out the idea that there are many different ways to help clients. It's important not to get too stuck in one particular school—whether that's person-centered, psychodynamic, or CBT—which claims that there is one best way. Instead, it’s about trying to remain open to a variety of methods.

The idea is that clients can be helped in many different ways, and various therapies bring unique skills. If we want to know the best way to work with an individual client, something that is often very helpful is to talk to them and work it out collaboratively. This doesn't mean clients always know what they need, but starting the conversation about what they have found helpful before and what they feel they need now can be beneficial.

Then, we can look at our own skill set and determine how we can help clients. Having that discussion might reveal that we can't provide what the client is looking for. If the client is seeking guidance and advice, that may not align with our usual approach.

In that case, we might refer the client elsewhere, rather than trying to do something that we don't feel comfortable with or trying to persuade the client to meet our own preferences. Of course, we all bring our own skills and knowledge to our work. For me, most of my training has been in existential therapy and person-centered therapy, so I operate in a fairly relational way.

However, I also incorporate insights from other therapeutic approaches that I find valuable. I may use cognitive techniques at times, especially if clients are dealing with specific anxieties or behavior patterns that need to change. I believe that all of these methods can be helpful, and while we can't do everything, there is room for us to bring in various elements we've learned as practitioners without getting too precious about any single modality.

One hundred percent! As a client yourself, which of the approaches have you found most beneficial? Well, I've found that different approaches can be both beneficial and unhelpful at different times.

I have had positive experiences with CBT, but there have also been times when I found it unhelpful. Existential therapy has been very impactful for me—it’s probably the one I practice the most. I’ve had fantastic person-centered supervision for many years, which has been incredibly helpful.

However, I would say that the therapist I found most useful over the years was a Kleinian therapist, while the least helpful therapy I ever experienced was also as a client, which just goes to show that it depends a lot on where you're at in life and the specific benefits you need at different times—not to mention that it also heavily relies on the therapist’s approach and persona. One of the things that some of our research has been showing more recently is just about the importance for clients of feeling cared for by therapists. I'm feeling like the therapist is doing something that shows you, as a client, that you matter to them; it's not just that they're doing a job.

I think if I look at the therapies that I’ve had, that's always been the underlying factor: whether it feels like the therapist is just doing a job and is not interested, or whether it feels that there’s actually a human giving and assuming connection. When there is that orientation, the work becomes much more secondary. Yeah, and you've read a book on working at relational depth in counseling and psychotherapy.

For anyone that doesn't know, could you please explain the concept of what relational depth actually is? What I was just saying really is about a state of deep connection, engagement, and relatedness between client and therapist. It's those moments when client and therapist—or client or therapist—our research shows, that is often at the same time, feel a very strong connection to the other.

What the research shows is that where clients experience those moments and have those moments of deep connection, they tend to have better outcomes; it's associated with better outcomes. It's during those times when clients feel a sense of real meeting and sharing. We say it's a very emotional, embodied sense; it's not just the cognitive feeling of being understood.

It's a deep empathic connection from the therapist to the client, but also where the client feels that they're understood. These seem to be very productive moments of therapy. So the work on relational depth has been about those moments and about the experience of that connection, and then how a therapist can facilitate that and create a space in which there can be more of that depth of connection.

Because of course, it’s not something that therapists make happen; you can't manipulate the relationship in some way to have a better connection. What you can perhaps do is relate to clients in ways that might allow more of that connection to come out. Additionally, you can look as a therapist at your own barriers to connection so that you don’t get in the way of it.

So that's the kind of work we've been doing around that. Are there any practical things that therapists can do to create those conditions where a situation of relational depth is more likely to occur? Yeah, it’s a great question.

Well, I think one of the things—going back to what I was saying earlier—is that allowing yourself as a therapist to express care to clients seems to be important. Clients say that this is one of the main things that allows those connections to happen. So that’s not about trying to feel care if you don’t, and it’s absolutely not about not having boundaries, but it is about trying to allow yourself to communicate feelings of interest and concern for the client—a kind of human flexibility.

You know, if you’re worried about a client, maybe it’s okay to say that. It’s about not being so boundary that what comes across is a kind of cold, detached disinterest. Clients were saying things like it was when the therapist saw that it was raining outside and they gave me an umbrella to go home with, or they carried on the session for a few more minutes because they could see how upset I was.

It’s those kinds of things that seem to be really important in creating the trust that allows clients to feel that they can really connect with this person and feel safe, because the person isn’t just doing a job. Of course, professionalism is also really important to clients; it’s not about wanting a therapist who is going to be doing lots of self-disclosure or breaking boundaries or not being clear about the therapeutic relationship. But it is about working with someone where, at some level, there’s a sense that this is someone who really cares about me and wants to do the best.

I remember clients talking about the importance of feeling that the therapist is on their side. That’s one thing. Another thing—number two—would be that as therapists, we can think about the ways in which we disconnect from people that might leak into our therapeutic work.

For instance, if we maybe deal with interpersonal threat by intellectualizing or emotionally withdrawing—maybe by becoming passive, or maybe becoming very compliant—if we can look at our lives and think about what are the times when I withdraw from connection when I don’t need to. So not just when do I keep myself safe, but when do I withdraw from a connection when actually I could afford to stay in connection with people. Then we can look at our piece of work and say does anything ever leak into that?

Do we, for instance, intellectualize with clients when it's difficult to stay connected? Or do we become very compliant? We’ve done some research on this, and we find that sometimes the things that therapists deal with in their everyday lives are particularly relevant; in around half the cases, they are.

And then in about a fifth of the cases, therapists recognize that they do really leak into their work at times. Of course, that’s not a bad thing, but what’s useful is to become aware of that and then think about how can I work on that? How can I improve?

I was mindful of that so that I could allow myself to stay more in connection with my client all the time. In the clinical therapy that you were working with, you experienced this relational depth. I think in my therapy I've experienced that at different times in different ways.

Certainly, that depth of connection has been important to me as a client as well as to the therapist, and the sense of connection with someone has always been an important factor in my own work and in my life. Ya know, I read in your website that you wrote your PhD thesis on the psychological effects of wearing a mask. I'd be interested to ask: why did you decide to focus on that particular topic?

Well, it's a very good question, and on reflection, it probably wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done in my life, but I was very interested in it. I was pursuing drama, and I had a friend who did a workshop on masks when I was in my undergraduate studies. What I was aware of when I did this mask workshop was just how powerfully transforming masks could be.

We did this drama with masks, and I became the character in the mask. I was really struck by how much I, and I think people around me, got into quite an immersive, transformative experience. So, I was very interested in that, and I became interested in the way that masks could become a very powerful means of transforming people.

I then became interested in whether perhaps what was happening was that the masks were helping people to express different sides of their personality. So, I did a thesis looking at that idea, exploring different cultures, literature, and also some drama therapy work—examining the idea that masks were a way of helping people unlock different aspects of themselves: like their shadow side, like their anima or animus, like their vulnerable selves, or their angry selves. I think often they were, you know, they were often used in that way and in quite powerful ways.

I guess they are, if you can help people access these different sides. There are big companies, for instance, I think it's the Geese Theatre Company, using masks in prison contexts where they help offenders look at these different aspects of themselves that may be more difficult to communicate in everyday life. Also, the kind of mask is something that we put on, and what's beneath the mask is, you know, the mask can be a persona, and there's something beneath that.

So I was very interested in that, and I wrote about that. My examiners weren't so keen on it and basically asked me to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. So, I spent about four or five years on that and then spent another three years writing a more psychologically evidence-based thesis, which was around the idea of masks again—the question of whether masks inhibit us.

I showed that people do feel more identified with the characters in the mask under certain conditions. So that would be, yeah, that was my thesis basically. I still haven't written that much about it.

I see whenever in my work that I haven't written that much about it. Maybe one day I'll publish. I think it is available on the web now.

Right? Okay, you're welcome to read it now—500 pages of it! My thesis!

So, you've spent, as a treatment, the best part of 20 years in the field of existential therapy. Is that right? Yeah, I qualified in '99, so coming up on 20 years.

I could've qualified as an existential psychotherapist in '99, so I guess I've been in this field for about 20 years. But I mean, I've been involved in the existential world. I trained mainly around person-centered therapies.

My work these days is mainly in pluralistic psychology, so I'm still very much involved in the existential world and some of my books have been about existential therapy. I love existential ideas, but I'm not in any way an existential purist, nor am I a person-centered purist. It's really important for me to be able to stand back, as well as standing in these different approaches, to see the connections between them and how they work together.

I'm drawing on different fields and different ways. The latest work I've done around the concept of directionality is another attempt, alongside pluralism, to find ways of building bridges between different therapies. Okay, and initially, what pulled you into existentialism?

Why did you become so interested in the field? I wanted to try and actually get out as a therapist. I think I did a one-year training in person-centered therapy at university, and then I wanted to train as an existential therapist.

But I think I wanted to go into the second-year course and they insisted that I start at the beginning. Then I was looking around for other courses and I kind of fell into it more than anything else. It wasn't a deliberate decision to train as an existential therapist.

I thought, well, I'll give it a go; it sounds a bit intellectual. Maybe I would like it! I quite liked the drama of person-centered therapy, and it was very active.

But when I interviewed for the existential course, I thought I might as well give it a go. It was at Regent University, so it seemed like a nice place to study. As I got into it, I thought.

. . Yeah, I liked it when I got into it, and I like the depth—philosophical depth of it—and it kind of questions the reading.

I think afterward, I got involved in it. That is, it's a kind of approach which, when you're reading with that philosophical depth, when you're training, it's like you're reading high in the air, and a lot of these complex texts are pretty difficult to come back from. That’s not to say that it makes it particularly more effective, but just I think that once you’ve engaged with those philosophical ideas—given that they don’t tend to be there in other therapies, or they are not so explicit—then I guess I've kept that with me, really, in that interest and always wanted to think about therapies at that level as well as other levels.

Yes, I’ve been reading the second edition of your book, "Accidental Therapies," and one of the concepts I find really interesting is existential guilt. Basically, when you're making decisions in life, no matter what you do, you're going to have existential guilt about the path not taken. I remember you were considering being a journalist at one point.

Is that just an example used in the book, or is that something you were actually going to do, or were you actually considering that? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that’s always been very important for me in my life has been around social justice and social change. So a question for me has always been: how do I have some kind of social impact and make a good contribution to the world?

I think as a therapist, I did that quite well as a psychologist. I mean, the choice was more between being an academic or going down more journalistic lines, and I did sometimes think that when I was younger—the idea that, you know, journalism reaches more people, you have a way of communicating with people that maybe in academia you don’t. So yeah, it was a very serious thing that I considered.

I did write—I mean, I wrote for women's magazines at one point, did some writing in different bits. The first book I wrote was kind of a popular psychology text about men's health and well-being. So yeah, I did often think about that.

And I think where I got stymied was— I remember I used to do quite a lot of radio work and got rung up to do interviews about "Why do men do this? " and "Why do men do that? " There was one interview I got asked to do, which was, "Why do men like barbecues?

Why do men go into the garden to do barbecues? " And I thought, this is, you know—is this really a good use of my time—talking about men and barbecues? The journalist had this theory that it was something with big vegetables, and I just thought, “I’ve had enough.

” I also had a bit of a run-in with The Times actually, where they did an article about men who live on their own. They’d asked me why I thought men lived at home with their parents when they’re adults. I said, “Well, there are lots of reasons.

Sometimes we've got a four-day week, and sometimes people stay home, you know? I’m fairly understanding—it wasn’t anything particular. ” They did this big splash cover about “MIT psychologist sneers at men who live at home,” and says, “They do it because their mummies spoil them.

” Obviously, that was what the journalist had been hoping I’d say, and when I hadn’t said it, they said it anyway. I complained, then I wrote to The Times and they actually retracted it and put an apology. I spoke to the journalist, and he said, “Well, you know, it was more interesting to write it this way than what you actually said.

” So I think I just had this sense that journalism was often about just saying what we wanted to hear rather than learning. At that point, I was happy leaving it, especially moving away from that, and I don’t particularly feel a strong desire to go back to it. Although the idea we can communicate some of the ideas more broadly—one of the things that’s really important to me these days is how we take ideas from the therapy world and communicate them more broadly to people in a way that can be a force for social good.

That’s a really important concern for me. But I think academia is a wonderful place to be able to generate those ideas and have things to say. Yeah, for sure.

In what ways can people use this concept of existential guilt as a motivating force in their lives for creating personal change and getting on a better path, would you say? Well, I think a lot of it is really about accepting that. I mean, one of the things I like about existentialism is that it's not so much about getting on a better path; it often flags up the tensions, the difficulties, and the challenges.

Nothing compares with that. A lot of the kind of more positive psychology, or perhaps kind of more than, say, New Age, but kind of ideas about there being a better way of doing it, and there's a right way of doing it, and self-help and self-development, I think what existential guilt introduces is the idea, you know, when you say we're always going to feel regret and sadness for what we haven't done, it is more about just coming to terms with that really and saying—and that when we experience that, when we feel that there are things in our lives that are naturalized, accepting that that's part of the human condition and maybe isn't something, you know, that there's not something wrong with us. We haven't failed because we feel that, but as human beings, it's inherent that we will feel that we could have done more, and I think for me that's quite a reassuring idea.

I think sometimes for clients, we're kind of driven and driven and then feel bad when we're not achieving those goals. Having that sense that it's okay to not achieve your goals for these psychos—oh, it's diffusing regret about it—is important. But I guess it does also help us think about what it is that we haven't done that leads us to feel guilt.

One of the things Buber, who's written a lot about guilt, says is that, you know, guilt does tell us about things that we genuinely— I mean, he writes more about existential guilt in the sense of hurting others or letting others down. He says, "Yeah, we feel guilt," and maybe it's because we have done something that's like others, and that contrast maybe with the idea that there is some internal pathology, but actually, maybe there is a reality there and that we can look at it from that. Yes, I think existentialism encourages us to reflect on these feelings and think about what we can change, but also to accept more calmly.

Yeah, you mentioned Buber there; one of the ideas I really liked in the book was Buber's whole idea of an "I-Thou" relationship stance as opposed to an "I-It. " Could you, for someone who doesn't know what the concept is, maybe talk a bit about it? So, Buber says that we always relate to other people, but there's two ways that we can do that.

One is what equals the "I-Thou" stance, and the other one is called the "I-It" stance. The "I-Thou" stance is our way of relating to another person which is humanizing, which experiences the other as a subjectivity rather than an objectivity or an object, which really tries to respect how the other person experiences their world and to stand alongside them with empathy and with care and with integrity and honesty. The "I-It" stance is a much more mechanistic way of understanding the other, where the other is essentially an object to us.

We try and do things to them or make them do things for us; we taxonomize them and see them as an example of a particular category rather than being open to the uniqueness of that other that we are encountering. I think Buber's ideas are incredibly important for how we think about the psychological treatment world today. We could say that there are also two ways of relating to patients or clients, one of which is to really stand alongside them, to try and understand their world as they understand it, to see what they're struggling with, and to understand the intelligibility in the sense behind that struggle.

Then the other is to see them as an instance of a particular diagnosis, whether it's depression or anxiety, and to have particular steps that we use to treat them irrespective of how they respond to that. They become a statistic in the mental health system rather than a real and living subjective person. Of course, Buber doesn't say that we can always relate to others in an "I-Thou" way; he says that we will inevitably have ways that we relate to others in an "I-It" way.

So, for instance, a diagnosis is a more "I-It" way of understanding someone, but for some clients, some of the time, it could be very helpful. Sometimes we need those relationships, those "I-It" stances, to help us deepen an understanding of others. But if our relationship to others is only in that "I-It" way, if our relationship to our clients is only in that "I-It" way, then something gets lost, and that comes back to what we talked about earlier about care and the importance of care.

For the clients or patients we work with, to be objectified by the other, to be turned into an object, isn't a good experience, and you know clients say that over and over and over again—that they don't want to just be a statistic. I think, as psychologists, therapists, and counselors, understanding that alternative way of relating to people is just so important with all healthcare professionals as well. You know, whether it's a doctor or a psychiatrist or a chiropodist, something about our relationship is really fundamental to people feeling respected and valued.

Definitely, I think it's prevalent in modern society as well. Could you maybe tell us about the concept of holistic listening and how therapists can use this in their practice? Yeah, holistic listening is, I guess, one way into that "I-Thou" stance because one of the things Buber says is that in the "I-Thou" relationship, we relate to the other as a whole—not in terms of separating them into individual parts.

Of listening out for particular cognitions or particular emotions, but we engage with the other as a whole. So, holistic listening is about trying to really take in the whole of the other—it's kind of breathing the other in, embodied, in a cognitive, in an effective way as a therapist. And, you know, are you doing exercises around it?

For instance, just as a wing, counselors are working with clients, or just as a kind of practice exercise to really try just listening with their body. So, not to focus so much on the specific words of what they're going to say in response, but just to try really hard to take in and listen deeply to the client and then respond when they feel something at a level of bodily resonance. And it's interesting what comes up.

I mean, it's not how one would expect therapies to work all the time, but for therapists, it can be really interesting to see how so much when they listen in that way, it just relaxes them, and noticing what comes up in their body—many of their feelings, like a kind of tightness in their chest or an emptiness in their stomach, relate to or resonate with what the client has been talking about. Because, I mean, when we pick up the really deep, meaningful stuff for somebody, of what's going on for them, it doesn't come through in a few words or even a few emotions. It comes through by trying to understand the whole of where that person is at and what's going on for them, often including the tensions and the contradictions and the competing directions in their life.

So, we need to listen holistically to really understand what someone’s about. Another idea I really liked that you brought up in your talk with us was Heidegger's idea of being thrown into the world—in the sense of throwing us into the world of the weak. Could you maybe talk about that, and also how people can become more individualized?

I think one of the ways he recommends to do it is through awareness of death. Can we talk about that? Yeah, so Heidegger uses this term "thrownness" and this idea that we are all thrown into the world; that we don't choose the world that we come into.

One of the dilemmas of existence is that we emerge in a world that's not of our making, and that somehow we have to find our way in it. He talks about the way that this thrownness is in a world of particular meanings, where some things are designated or defined as being meaningful—whether that’s to care for others or to achieve or to earn lots of money. These are socially given meanings, and most of us spend our lives chasing after these things and kind of running forward in a way that we haven't really worked out for ourselves, but it’s part of our social context.

Heidegger believes that we're always immersed in the world and, like postmodern thinkers, doesn’t think that we can ever totally extract ourselves from it. But through recognizing this social nature of our meanings, we can reflect and think about: Is this where I want to or should go? One of the analogies he uses is that it's like a kind of marathon race, where somebody wakes up in the middle of a marathon race, sees everybody running, and feels that they have to run in the same direction as everyone else without really knowing where they're going and what they're doing.

The question is: Is that right for us? We do have some capacity, I guess, to stand back from that, to stand back and say, "What is meaningful for me? " or "What meanings do I want?

" Heidegger talks about the way that, to some extent, death can individualize us—my mortality—because we realize that we're not lost in this crowd forever, but at some point, we have to stop that race. When we stop, not everyone else is going to be stopping at the same time; some will go on, and some will stop before, but our unique stopping point is ours uniquely. Seeing that can help us recognize that there is a certain degree of individuality and uniqueness in what we want to be, between where we start and where we end that race.

We might want to keep on going in the same direction as everyone else, maybe we do, but our time is finite, and maybe we want to be something different in our lives. That’s a question Heidegger invites us to ask: What do we want to make of these existences that we do have, within the context and the limitations that are given? I guess that's one question that a lot of our clients come to us with, either explicitly or implicitly.

One of the things I like about existential therapy is that it stays with that question. It doesn’t pathologize; it doesn’t say, you know, there’s somebody who’s asking those questions of meaning or is even depressed about that kind of sense of lack of meaning—that there’s necessarily something wrong with them. Perhaps they've got a level of insight and understanding and questioning that maybe others are just blind to, or are numb to—that's fair enough—but recognizing the value of asking those questions, I think, can be really important and really humanizing for clients.

Because they are big questions, and they're significant. Challenges, and I guess throughout human history, we've tended to avoid those questions. Religion and ideologies have often been ways that have soothed us or, whether deliberately or not, have taken us away from these questions.

What ultimately is the meaning of my life? We're living in an era where those kinds of security blankets are coming off more and more, and where people are less certain about those securities. They are tough questions that we all need to ask.

As far as I know, at least, there really aren't any easy answers to these questions; they're really hard, and that’s troubling. I think existential therapy is probably one of the only therapies that really says being confused, asking questions, being lost, and really not knowing what life is about is not some form of pathology, but is actually maybe the natural state of human beings when we're really honest about stuff. It’s not necessarily very comforting; it’s not what clients want to hear, and certainly not something I would ever impose on the client, nor would any existential therapists.

But I think for people who are asking those questions, it's good to have somebody who understands that those are important questions rather than someone who may have easier answers because it throws everything into question. You know, we can do these self-help books, and we can do therapy, and we can do all these things to improve ourselves, but then when you ask a question about, “What is it all for? Why are we doing all these things?

What's the point of it all? ” there are no easy answers. One of my favorite quotes I heard recently is a Buddhist one: "A little tightness is small awakening; a big tightness is big awakening.

" So the more dough you can bring into your life, I think the better it can get. Just a couple more questions to finish off. I know you've got to get going.

For anybody listening to this who’s considering a career in therapy, what advice would you give to them about how to become the best possible therapist they could be? That's a very good question. To be the best therapist they can be, I would say the first thing is to think about what their strengths are.

Are their strengths in listening and being very empathic? Are their strengths more in actively engaging people? Are their strengths in interpreting and gaining insight?

Or are they more spiritually inclined? Then they should think about what therapies would match or help them develop those strengths in the best possible way. So someone who is really good at listening and has a lot of time might benefit most from training in a person-centered approach, while someone who is more active and prefers to be more engaged might do better in a more CBT approach or a more directive style.

I think it's also really important to look at your motivation for why you want to be a therapist. We all have our own motivations, and that's not a bad thing at all, but recognizing what's in it for us is important so that we can put that to one side and be there for our clients. I think also just recognizing that it’s a challenging field to go into.

Some people want to enter it and think that with just a few years of training, they'll be able to come out and have a full private practice charging people a hundred pounds an hour. It just doesn’t work like that. The people who are successful at it are the ones who are committed, and generally, they are the ones who have the ethics to do it from a place of care and concern for their clients.

It's an amazing, gratifying profession, but it also draws a lot from people and requires an enormous amount of responsibility and professionalism, as well as personal awareness. So, I guess, be prepared for a lot of personal reflective work, whatever approach you go into—that’s really important. And last question, Mike: What does the future hold for you, and where can people find your work online?

Well, just to mention, I've just done a book on direction. I mean, who knows what the future holds for me? But in the immediate future, I've written a book called "Integration: Counseling and Psychotherapy by Rex Finality, Synergy, and Social Change," which is a very snappy title!

It’s about trying to offer a broader framework for therapy around the idea of directionality or agency. It links together existential ideas as a basis for an integrative framework that perhaps builds some bridges across different therapies. So it’s based on existential and person-centered ideas, but it also connects with psychodynamic thoughts and Jungian concepts.

That will be out in February, and you can find that just by googling "Mike Cooper," or on Amazon, or by looking it up at Sage. I think, personally, what I would like to be doing— as I said earlier— is trying to engage more with issues of social justice and social change. I think I’d like to explore how we can use our ideas in the therapy world to help improve lives on a broader level.

Looking at issues like racism, homophobia, and transphobia, I think we've learned so much in the therapy field about how to help people and some really important principles. But obviously, he's not the age; he's not the truth, but he has a lot to contribute to wider social change. So that's where I'd like to take my work, but also continue to develop at the one-to-one level, developing as a practitioner and as a teacher, and continue to do work that, at that level, can hopefully make a difference to people's lives.

But to be able to join up with a wider social level as well. One hundred percent. Well, Mike, thanks so much for taking the time; I really appreciate it, and speak soon.

All right, I got a nice now. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget that you can win a three-month pass worth 150 points to the Weekend University if you subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

If you're interested in keeping up to date with new psychology lectures and upcoming events, you can sign up for the mailing list at theweekenduniversity. com.