when is it appropriate to say that physical symptoms may have psychological and emotional roots?
In my opinion this is one of the most confusing, confused and un-integrated areas of counselling and psychotherapy as we know it. The overall ambivalent position which we find ourselves in vis-à-vis the medical model goes back all the way to the conception of our field in modern form through Freud. Years ago, Emmy van Deurzen-Smith suggested that counselling is providing those emotional functions in society which were traditionally taken care of through the intuitive art of mothering, and that counsellors are now called to do the same thing in a scientifically accountable and validated way. This is a compelling argument, and I have no doubt that counselling and psychotherapy do acquire that social function. But I argued at the time (see ref European Journal of Psychotherapy) that whilst it may be true that we are seen as the mothers by the public, this may be not be a definition of our profession which it is wise to identify with for ourselves. For a start, as feminism has helped us re
