Overview

Class has more or less vanished from the counselling lexicon, argues Clare Slaney in this powerful collection of essays and interviews with experienced practitioners from myriad counselling and psychotherapy schools, educations and trainings. But you cannot take politics out of counselling. To be truly therapeutic, counselling relies on depth of relationship, non-judgemental attitude and an acute awareness that we are all fundamentally shaped and changed by our environments, past and present. The class we are born into powerfully influences who we are, our expectations and opportunities and our ability to (in Rogerian terms) self-actualise. If counselling is to be truly in service to its clients, the profession has to welcome practitioners who do not conform to the stereotype – White, middle-class, degree-educated, comfortably affluent and female. But the drive towards professionalisation, led by market forces and operationalised in the form of increasingly rigid hierarchical standards and manualised practices, has made counselling all-but out of reach to working class folk and those without a reliable income, both as a profession and a therapy. Its training has become unaffordable and its culture increasingly hostile to anyone other than those who conform to the stereotype. Thought-provoking, challenging, confrontational and angry, this collection fills a gaping void in the professional literature and makes essential reading for every counsellor and psychotherapist, supervisor, tutor and academic researcher.

Full Product Details

Author:   Clare Slaney
Publisher:   PCCS Books
Imprint:   PCCS Books
ISBN:  

9781915220721

ISBN 10:   1915220726
Pages:   270
Publication Date:   05 February 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

It begins here (Introduction) 1. Class, culture, power, Pierre Bourdieu and me – Pete Sanders  2. Crossing the class line: From shitwork to status – S 3. Power and professional silences: How class shapes therapeutic culture – Maria Albertsen 4. How can we not weaponise our privilege? The complex intersection of class, race and caste – Rhea Gandhi 5. Keeping up appearances: Authentic empathy and its shadow – Gillian Proctor 6. A choice is only a choice if you know you’ve got one – Richard Church 7. Between nations, between meanings: Ancestral legacies, migrant status and the spaces where we miss each other – Lucia Sarmiento Verano 8. No one likes a tourist: Belonging, identity and the mirking class – Katy Alexander 9. Beyond the White mask: From submission to active citizenship – Rotimi Akinsete 10. When the only tool you have is therapy: Class, naivety and harm – John Radoux 11. Unseen labour, unspoken costs: Covering up the classism in the therapy profession – Roxy Birdsall and Kirandeep Kaur 12. You can’t keep politics out of the counselling room – Clare Slaney 13. The violence of certainty: Holding a space of safety in an unsafe place – M 14. Too many therapists sitting on their hands: Social justice in counselling – Callum Jones and Craig Johnson

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Author Information

Clare Slaney is an established counsellor, groupworker and supervisor based in Central London. She qualified as a psychotherapist in 2007 and completed the MA in 2009. Her practice is rooted in the person-centred and existential traditions and grounded in authenticity, paradox and the continual negotiation between self and society. Alongside her clinical practice, she speaks and writes on the structural challenges facing the counselling profession, particularly the exploitation of unpaid labour and the impact of poverty on both clients and therapists. In exploring the  themes of marginalisation, power and ethics in the counselling professions, she advocates for more honest and equitable practice. She is an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

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