Allan Turner has written the chapter “Person-Centred Approaches to Trauma, Critical Incidents and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” in the brand new book “Client Issues in Counselling and Psychotherapy – Person-centred Practice” edited by Janet Tolan and Paul Wilkins.
We enjoyed interviewing Allan about his theoretical perspective and extensive experience working with trauma, critical incidents, and PTSD. Allan approaches these very challenging client issues from a person-centred perspective, and writes openly and clearly about how this forms the basis of his practice.
Course Content
Presenter
![](https://onlinevents.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Allan-Turner.png)
MBACP Senior Accredited Counsellor and Psychotherapist
I have been counselling for 40 years, and much of my work has been with couples. My two adult children have autistic traits, one mild, the other quite severe, so I had some idea of how Autism looks. I started attending workshops on the subject to learn more. I came to understand that there is a high incidence in couples presenting for counselling. I realise that this is not surprising. Inherent in Autism is a difficulty in empathy, or more accurately, difficulty with “theory of mind”. This is likely to create problems in close relationships, and I suspect this is the reason that it appears to be so prevalent when counselling couples.
For the last twelve years, I, and a colleague, have run short training courses to equip counsellors to be able to work with couples. We have included a section on Autism and the normal reaction before people start the course is to wonder why we have included it. By the end of the course, the participants say that they understand why we included it and wish that it was included in their counsellor training.