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Clive Perraton Mountford, February 2010
I never lived there, but Clyde Road was somehow omnipresent in my childhood. It is—in reality—a simple, prewar, British street of similar houses.
Clive Road is a more complex and varied thoroughfare. It begins in the English Potteries, meanders out to the Staffordshire Moorlands where I spent my childhood, somehow gets itself across the sea to Western Canada, takes a detour through Oxford’s famous spires, to "Derek and Clive" country where London meets Essex, Bhutan, the Staffordshire Moorlands again, back to Western Canada, Norwich in England, and now… it seems I am moving to North Wales where I have always taken myself when there was time and opportunity.
And along Clive Road there have been universities and schools, railroads requiring repair, mountains to be hollowed out, young people to be taught about mathematics, history, and computing, younger people to be taught to read and write, undergraduates learning about their intellectual heritage, young philosophers seeking morality, and eventually clients seeking counselling and students seeking to learn to practice counselling. There have been relationships, friends, experiences which some would label mystical, and always a deep love of Earth and its inhabitants.
Today, Clive Road is a place where something that has been called an "original synthesis" of radical person-centered therapy and experiential focusing is practiced.
With a young Lleuad just north of the Mawddach Estuary, North Wales
If you are considering therapy with me, want a focusing teacher, are looking for a supervisor, or even considering training as a counsellor yourself, you probably want to know something about my own training and qualifications.
I moved from Canada to England at the end of the 1990s to train with Brian Thorne at the University of East Anglia, stayed on to acquire an M.A., and then took a higher education diploma in Focusing and Experiential Psychotherapy with Campbell Purton. I haven't formally trained in supervision. Learning from my own supervisor—Brian again—seemed a better proposition to both of us, and working as a course director I accumulated a lot of supervisory experience.
As for other qualifications and experience, my first degree is in philosophy as is my doctorate. Both are from the University of British Columbia. That fine institution also provided me with a degree in early years education during one of my periodic divorces from philosophy, and I have taught at all levels in the education system from kindergarten through university. Until recently, I continued to teach a distance education philosophy course of my own devising for UBC.
The other side of the estuary, a winter morning with Brue Dog and coffee
My ‘clinical interests’ are whoever comes through my door, but over the years it has become apparent that a high proportion of my clients are long-term and with the kinds of ‘issues’ that can seriously mess up a person's life. Person-centered counselling does work for anorexia, post-traumatic stress disorder, the consequences of childhood deprivation and abuse, and—in my experience—pretty much any other label that a more objectifying approach to human suffering attaches to it. Mind you, although colleagues and students consider me ‘very person-centered’, I am no purist, and I certainly am not classically client-centered. A little process direction of the focusing kind is a fine axle grease when you want to get somewhere.
Hey, they left
Professional memberships and things?
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Accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
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Registered Clinical Counsellor in British Columbia
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UKRCP Registered Independant Counsellor/Psychotherapist
and I am a
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Certified Focusing Professional
I like that one.
Lleuad watching Clive...
watching Lleuad
through a camera
To learn more about me and how I understand the practice of counselling and psychotherapy, you might like to check out
And for the record, here are another two links. The first is the earlier version of my article on session length accessible through the articles page.
One size doesn't fit all (2005)
The second is my doctoral dissertation on the moral umbrella and an alternate approach to deep ecology. It nearly got published—the publisher's advisors got cold feet because it was ‘ahead of the game’. My guess is that it will still be ahead of the game when fish are swimming around the hills of North Wales. Anyway, as academic work goes, it is surprisingly readable.
My backyard when in Canada...The Kettle, Clearwater River
Britain
0777 56 500 14
British Columbia
250 674 3635
Clive's Road in spring: Ava at the gate
Nope, this ain't Canada. Clive's Road in Norfolk, January 2010.
More information? Please check out the links, or call, or email.
February 2010 copyright Clive Perraton Mountford