conclusion counselling essay

197 – Academic Writing in Counselling

197 - Academic Writing in Counselling

Who are you in your practice – working with moral injury.

In Episode 197 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast – the first of the new season, as we enter the start of the 2021/22 academic year – presenters Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly introduce two new regular slots:

• ‘Counselling Foundations’ – this section will explore theory, skills and practice points that underpin counselling practice, and is intended to be useful to both students and qualified practitioners. The focus in this episode is on academic writing in counselling.
• ‘Focus on Self’ – this recognises the importance of self in counselling training and work, and today looks at who you are in your counselling practice.

Last but not least, in our ongoing ‘Practice Matters’ slot, Rory interviews Amy Launder on working with moral injury.

Free Handout Download

Use of Self in Counselling

Academic Writing in Counselling (starts at 2.15 mins)

Academic writing is part of counselling life. While students of counselling and psychotherapy clearly are expected to produce various assignments and other pieces of written work as part of their evidence of learning, qualified practitioners too may continue to face the need to produce academic writing for any further studies and CPD, and if they are undertaking research projects.

Rory and Ken talk about the various barriers that may face those approaching academic writing and explore the feelings that they might face as they prepare to write. Counselling Tutor has produced a course on academic writing specifically to support people in this situation.

Ken describes the aspects of academic writing in counselling covered by the new course and shares a number of tips for approaching academic writing, relating to:

• the importance of understanding the question, and how to ensure you have done this before starting work
• Bloom’s verbs
• time management and planning in academic writing
• location for academic writing
• how to find the information and quotations you need to evidence your work
• referencing tools

You can find out more about the new course and how to register for this on the Counselling Tutor website.

Who Are You in Your Practice? (starts at 16.25 mins)

Get on-demand certified cpd that is implementable in your practice, counsellor cpd library.

• Over 150 hours of on-demand CPD lectures to help you stay current with your CPD ethical requirements
• Support, and be supported , by thousands of other counsellors as a member of the exclusive online community.
• Access your learning anytime you want ... anywhere you choose ... using any device type — desktop or mobile.

In the first in this new ‘Counselling Foundations’ slot, Ken asks Rory: ‘Who are you in your practice?’ Rory’s response – that he is himself, but a professional, edited version compared to the one that might drink tea with a friend – leads to a wide-ranging discussion on many aspects of how self affects counselling work, including:

• self-disclosure
• imposter syndrome
• parallel process
• transference
• self-awareness
• personal development

Rory has prepared a free handout on the use of self in counselling, which is available in the box below.

Working with Moral Injury (starts at 35.25 mins)

Rory speaks with psychotherapist Amy Launder, who has recorded a lecture for  Counsellor CPD (our online CPD library containing hundreds of hours of on-demand CPD lectures, training and resources to support your professional development) on working with moral injury. This is a topic that has huge relevance to many clients and is particularly topical in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.

Rory and Amy discuss:

• what moral injury is
• the origins of moral injury in military service
• what might cause moral injury
• how moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relate to each other
• the impacts of moral injury
• how a client with a moral injury may present in the counselling room
• the trolley dilemma (a classic thought experiment developed by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 and adapted by Judith Jarvis Thomson in 1985)
• how we can work effectively with moral injury
• pros and cons of different modalities in this area of work

Links and Resources

Counselling Skills Academy

Advanced Certificate in Counselling Supervision

Basic Counselling Skills: A Student Guide

Counsellor CPD

Counselling Study Resource

Counselling Theory in Practice: A Student Guide

Counselling Tutor Shop

Facebook group

Online and Telephone Counselling: A Practitioner’s Guide

Online and Telephone Counselling Course

Spotted out-of-date info or broken links? Kindly let us know the page where you found them. Email: [email protected]

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10 Conclusion

• Published: January 2018
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This conclusion draws together the main themes of Working with goals in counselling and psychotherapy and revisits complex reasons people choose to engage in therapy. It explores the debate around the use, and usefulness, of goals in therapy. It sees the question ‘What do you want?’ as central to the therapeutic endeavour; but sees this a deceptively simple question that draws on complex psychological processes and requires great therapeutic skills to help clients answer. The chapter argues that therapeutic goals are about how therapists can help clients start in therapy, how therapists can remain flexible and open to changes in the directions that therapy may take, and how therapists can be as helpful as possible in joining clients on their journeys. The chapter concludes that the best kind of therapy is the one that best fits the goals, wants, needs, preferences, and context of the client.

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Essays on the Importance of . . . in Psychotherapy and Counseling

• essays-on-the-importance-of-in-psychotherapy-and-counseling

Article Published: 11/11/2020

The following is a series of three short essays on the importance of various aspects of doing psychotherapy and counseling. I received my counseling degree in 1978, and I have a small private practice specializing in very brief therapy (mostly single-session), generally using hypnosis based on the work of Milton H. Erickson. I have published 11 books in this field and written many articles, and I have provided workshops, trainings, and presentations in the United States and abroad.

On the Importance of Inclusivity

Clients come to see us because they are stuck; that is, they know only one interpretation for a particular stimulus in their life and that interpretation leads to one response. Although this is a rather simplistic model of psychotherapy, it seems to fit the facts. This means that our main task as therapists is to help clients discover choices in interpretation and choices in responses. Then, they are not stuck!

Also, both we and our clients tend to think about what is troubling them in an either/or fashion. They are depressed, panicked, anxious, obsessive, sad, grieving, unhappy, desperate, blocked, and limited OR they are not. O’Hanlon (2003) found a fascinating way to deal with this stuck state of affairs. He calls it inclusivity , which gets into the realm of both/and . This is oxymoronic technique, using confusion or scrambling of meaning, and is best illustrated by the following statements, generally prefaced by “I wonder how it would feel to be . . .”

• happily depressed/depressedly happy
• compulsively spontaneous/spontaneously compulsive
• obsessively casual/casually obsessive
• sadly delighted/delightedly or happily sad
• desperately free/freely desperate
• actively blocked/blocked actively
• grievingly full of warm memories/warmly grieving
• calmly panicked/panicky calm
• anxiously at peace/ peacefully or calmly anxious
• stressedly calm/calmly stressed
• openly protective/protectively open
• freely dependent/dependently free

Please note that these are all oxymorons, like a “down escalator” or “jumbo shrimp.” 

Recently, in the support group I facilitate, one of the members was talking about being depressed. This was first normalized by another group member talking about how depressed she had been and how she is still occasionally depressed about having cancer. I pointed out that almost everyone I know who has been diagnosed with a life-challenging disease goes through depression at one time or another. Then, I said, “I wonder what it would be like to be happily depressed?” The confusion that appeared in his face was a wonder to behold. Others in the group got the idea and added many both/and comments. (I leave this to your imagination.) He began to smile with the novelty of these new ideas. How could he be depressedly alive and active? What would it be like to be energetically slothful?

Inclusive statements scramble thinking and provide interesting choices for what had hitherto been restricted. I hope thinking more about the transformation involved in going from either/or to both/and will provide you with choices in your own life and also choices for your clients. You might even become effectively ineffective, for example!  On the Importance of Expectation in Hypnosis and Psychotherapy

Expectation is considered the basis of the placebo effect in both medicine and psychotherapy. Expectation involves hope and anticipation and wishing. 

In the beginning, psychoanalysis and psychodynamic approaches were structured for long-term involvement with a client, frequently going on for many years. As psychotherapy developed, the expectation was for fewer and fewer sessions. We now have brief therapy and very brief therapy and single-session therapy. Hoyt (2009) gives an excellent history of brief therapy, along with a scholarly based introduction to the subject. In my practice, I function as a very brief therapist, rarely seeing clients more than one or two times (more if they request). Let me relate how I arrived at this way of working.

I heard the late Steve de Shazer describe a research project carried out at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee. Clients were randomly told at intake that their particular presenting problem usually took five or 10 sessions with a therapist. The therapists did not know about this. At follow-up, it was found that the clients who were told 10 sessions began to do “serious” work in their eighth or ninth session, and the clients who were told five sessions did this generally in the fourth session. Having spent most of my life as an academic scientist, I did a simple extrapolation and wondered what would happen if a client were told that their concerns could be resolved to their satisfaction in one session (two if really needed). So I began telling clients that I worked as a very brief therapist who rarely saw clients more than one or two times. My expectation was one or two sessions, and this turned out to be the case with most of my clients. The late Kay Thompson (2004), one of Erickson’s best students, was fond of saying something like, “If you do not believe in what you are doing, then why should the client?” I believe. It also undoubtedly helps that my sessions are always open-ended with respect to time. (I believe that the record for this is Erickson’s 17-hour session—my record is about three hours.)

Because I have written a book about how I work in this mode (Battino, 2006), I will just mention a few of the things that I do here.

• Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) – A session frequently involves some use of the SFBT m iracle question , with its expectation that the client will create in their post-miracle thinking such realistic and appealing life changes that they cannot help but incorporate these changes into their lives. The trick, if you will, is to get the client to provide as much detail as you can elicit for their post-miracle life. Connected with this is suggesting a number of ways they can act as if their life has changed in a particularly desirable way.
• Narrative Therapy – When a client is stuck (why they come to see you), they feel as if they cannot act differently (i.e., they are being controlled in some way by internal forces). Externalization is then used to suggest to the client that the controlling power/entity can be resisted and overcome and even “exorcized.” Although describing the externalization process as an exorcism may appear to be strange, my clients liked this description, and we then work out ways for this to happen. When and how have they successfully resisted or overcome this internal demon? Usually, this work is done in the hypnosis segment of the session, but it can be done directly.
• Gestalt Therapy, Two-Chair Technique – With a surprising number of clients, the Gestalt therapy two-chair procedure is just the correct thing to do. This is the case with polarities within the client and with conflicts with parents or other relatives or people. When a client really gets into switching roles, they are usually in some level of trance.
• Reframing – Suggesting a different meaning to an event, feeling, or experience can be revolutionary. Being stuck means interpreting what is happening in one’s life in only one way. Reframing provides alternate meanings and allows the client to view their life from a changed perspective. Thinking of behaviors in different contexts is also a reframing. To perceive one’s self differently is change that is lasting.
• Stories – Telling stories and building metaphors that contain alternative ways of being and thinking allow the client to discover new ways of living and acting. I tell lots of stories, many of them personal.
• Hypnosis for Consolidation – It is generally accepted that people are more receptive to suggestions while they are in a trance state. The hypnosis segment of a session usually occurs at the end and is used to consolidate and repeat the various themes that have emerged during the session. New suggestions are introduced and woven into the tapestry of the session. The client’s inner mind can then pick and choose what makes the most sense for them. Many relevant possibilities are introduced here.

Milton H. Erickson was an artist in structuring a session with a client so that various expectations were “seeded” at the beginning of the session and then utilized at later, appropriate times. People anticipate change in various ways. Anticipating going to a hospital for surgery can be scary in terms of the procedure or it can be hopeful in terms of the expected outcome. When I got a full knee replacement, I did not look forward to the surgery or the long rehab period, but I certainly looked forward to being able to walk and hike comfortably. Which aspect do you focus on? When you focus on the hopeful and positive aspects of change, the negative aspects dim and blur and can be quickly forgotten or overlooked. When hoped-for change is seeded, then it is more likely to occur. The placebo effect is about anticipating positive change, healing, and health. The literature shows it to be remarkably effective. That is why my expectation is that therapy will proceed rapidly and effectively. 

Expect happiness, health, joy, and the probability of rapid change. On the Importance of Concerns (vs. Problems) in Hypnosis and Psychotherapy

The development of solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) by Steve de Shazer and colleagues was a paradigmatic 180-degree shift from the problem-focused therapy that was based initially on the medical model. Yet even with SFBT, the work is still about the “problems” that the clients present. The conversation with the client is about the solutions they have attempted and the solutions that they can attempt. If you ask clients to tell you about their problems, they will do so, and almost ad infinitum . If you ask them what has changed in their life recently that they would like to continue, what has worked for them, and what works for them from time to time, they will tell you that. The emphasis is on solution talk and not problem talk. Stating this another way, the emphasis is not on the organic medical “disease” model but a mental model in which the client has gotten stuck in ways of thinking and behaving that they would like to change.

I have a problem with clients having problems that need solutions. (This is too mathematical!) I prefer thinking about clients being concerned about their thoughts and behaviors (i.e., there are things in their lives that bother them). A concern is of a lesser magnitude than a problem. Problems are serious, and concerns are troubling. Concerns are more easily remedied. I like to think of my clients (and this is my personal belief) as being temporarily troubled . In fact, that is the only diagnosis I am willing to give: being temporarily troubled.

You may think that I am playing games with words here, and I am. Yet in talk therapy, the words we use are the essence of the treatment, the nature of the interaction, and the change agent. Going from a problem to a concern to being temporarily troubled is a major reframe. And reframing is the linguistic mind-changing mechanism of choice for second-order change. Watzlawick et al. (1974) wrote about reframing as the central approach to second-order change, or really changing the system. The goal of therapy is to get the client to do something different, and this occurs via thinking and believing differently about their life and circumstance. They are stuck because they typically have only one way of interpreting or viewing their lives, and this typically leads to only one response. Change comes from changing perspective. 

I am simply urging a small change from problem to concern and suggesting that you think about using the diagnosis (if needed) of temporarily troubled .

Battino, R. (2006). Expectation: The very brief therapy book . Crown House Publishing Ltd.

Hoyt, M. F. (2009). Brief psychotherapies. Principles & practices . Zeig, Tucker & Theisen Inc.

O’Hanlon. B. (2003). A guide to inclusive therapy: 26 methods of respectful resistance-dissolving therapy . W.W. Norton and Company.

Thompson, K. F. (2004). The art of therapeutic communication. The collected works of Kay F. Thompson . Crown House Publishing Ltd.

Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution . W.W. Norton & Company.

For more information about my work, please visit rubinbattino.com .

**Opinions and thoughts expressed in our Counseling Confab articles belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or practices of NBCC and Affiliates.

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Mick Cooper Training and Consultancy

Essay Writing in Counselling and Psychotherapy: Top Tips

I’m a liberal when it comes to most things—except (as my students will know) fonts, formatting, and grammar. So why am I a fully signed-up member of the Grammar Police (or should that be ‘grammar police’)? Well, aside from my various OCDs (yup, that’s Oxford Comma Disorder), it’s a way that you, as a writer, can make sure that your beautiful, brilliant, creative writing is seen in its best possible light—not detracted by missing apostrophes and torturously convoluted sentences. So here are over 25 top tips for those of you writing essays and dissertations—at all levels—based on years of marking and encountering the same issues time after time. All of these tips are aligned with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition), which provides an essential set of guidelines and standards for writing papers in psychology-related fields. There’s also a checklist you can download from here to go through your draft assignments to check everything is covered. (And just to say, by way of disclaimer, listen to your tutors first and foremost: if they see things differently, do what they say—they’re going to be the ones marking your papers!)

Puncutation

Apostrophes. You just would not believe how many students working at graduate, Master's, and even doctoral level dont know when to put apostrophe's and when not to. Check out the rules on it—it takes two minute's on the web ( try this site )—and you'll never drive your marker's crazy again (whose this Roger’s bloke that students keep writing about?).

Single (‘ ’) or double (“ ”) quotation marks? For UK English it’s single; for US English it’s double. The only exception is when you give quotation marks within quotations marks, in which case you use the other type. So, for instance, in UK English you might write:

Charlie said, ‘I’ve often told myself, “buck up, don’t be stupid,” but I do find it hard.’ On the other hand, Sharon said…

And while we’re at it, make sure those are ‘curly marks’ (or ‘smart apostrophes’), and not the symbols for inches (") or feet ('), which are straight.

One space after a full stop . Not two. That’s for when we had typewriters.

Colon (:) before a list , not semi-colon (;), and definitely not colon-dash (:-).

Write out numbers as words if they are below 10 (except if they are to do with dates, times, or mathematical functions; or at the start of the sentence). So, for instance:

‘Across the three cohorts there were over 500 participants.’

‘In this study, six of the young people said…’

Think where you’re putting your commas . They’re not sprinkles: something you just liberally and randomly scatter over your text. So check where you’ve put them, and that they meaningfully separate out clauses, or items, in your writing .

And, while we’re at it, a comma before the last item in a list (after ‘and’). This is known as an ‘ Oxford comma ’, and is recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA) to improve clarity. So, for instance, you’d write that ‘Across the counselling, psychotherapy, and psychiatric literature…’ rather than ‘Across the counselling, psychotherapy and psychiatric literature…’

Watch out for over-capitalising words . In most cases, you don’t need to capitalise—you’re not writing German (unless, of course, you are). Most words don’t need capitalisation (e.g., ‘person-centred therapy’, not ‘Person-Centred Therapy’), unless they are ‘ proper nouns ’ (that is, names of specific one-of-a-kind items, like Fritz Perls or the University of Sussex).

Key terms should be italicised on first use . Say you’re writing an essay about phenomenology, or it’s a key term that you’re going to define subsequently. The first time you use the term, italicise it. For instance, ‘Person-centred therapy is based upon a phenomenological understanding of human being. Phenomenology was a philosophy developed by Husserl, and refers to…’. An exception to this is that, if you want to introduce a term but without any subsequent definition (perhaps it’s not that central to your essay), put it in quotation marks. For instance, ‘Transactional analysis is based on such concepts as “ego states” and “scripts”, while Gestalt therapy…’

Quotations AND CITATIONS

Reference your claims . Whenever you state how things are, or how things might be seen, reference where this is from. Typically, a paragraph might have four or more references in it. If you find that you have several paragraphs without any at all, check you’re not making claims without saying their source. If it’s your own opinion, that’s fine (particularly later on in essays, for instance in the discussion), but be clear that that’s the case.

If you give a direct quotation, give the page number of the text it’s from (as well as the author(s) and date).

If a quotation is more than 40 words (a ‘block quotation’), indent it .

Otherwise, treat direct quotations as you would other text . So you don’t need to italicise it, put it in font size 8 or 18, use a different font colour etc. The same for quotations from research participants: use quotation marks and treat as block quotations if over 40 words, but otherwise leave well enough alone.

The page number comes between the close quotation mark and the full stop (if the direct quote is in the text). For instance: Rogers (1957) said, ‘The greatest regret in my career is that I didn’t develop pluralistic thinking and practice’ (p. 23). The only exception to this is with block quotations, in which case the page number comes after the full stop. Stupid, I know, but there you go.

In text citations for papers with 3 or more authors only need the first author now from first citation onwards, with ‘et al.’: e.g., ‘Cooper et al. (2021) say…’

Paragraphs, Sentences, and Sections

One paragraph, one point . Don’t try and squeeze lots of different points and issues into one paragraph. Often, a good way to write paragraphs is with a first sentences that summarises what you are saying in it, then subsequent sentences that unpack it in more detail.

Keep sentences short. In most cases, it doesn’t need to be more than three lines or so. If it’s longer, check whether you can break the sentence down into simpler parts.

Keep sentences simple. You don’t normally need more than two or three ‘ clauses ’; and if you’ve got more, for instance, like this sentence has—with lots of commas, semi-colons, and dashes in it—you can see how it starts to get more difficult to follow, so try and simplify.

Make sure you give clear breaks between paragraphs . So that the reader can see where one ends and the other begins. For instance, have a line break, or else indent the first line of each paragraph.

Headings should stand out . That’s what they are there for, so make sure they are different from the rest of the text. For instance, do as bold and centred. Also, if you are using different levels of headings (for instance, headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings), make it really clear which are which, with higher levels more prominent in the text.

Don’t forget page numbers . If you want your assessors to be able to give feedback, they need to be able to point to where things are.

General writing

Use acronyms sparingly . ‘The AG group felt that ACT was superior to CBB on the TF outcomes…’ Unless you’ve got the memory of a child genius they’re a nightmare. If you do use them, make sure you explain what they are on first use.

Avoid jargon/overly-casual terms . ‘The therapists in the study seemed quite chilled; but, for future research more groundedness and heart-centredness could possibly help.’ Enough said!

Avoid repetition. Saying something once is nearly always enough. You don’t need to repeat it again and again. It gets tedious. Especially when you say things over and over again.

Be consistent in the terminology that you use . For instance, if you are doing an interview study with young people, don’t switch randomly between calling your participants ‘young people’, ‘adolescents’, ‘teenagers’, ‘clients’, and ‘participants’. Choose one term and stick to it and; if you do use more than one term, be consistent in which one you use when.

Use footnotes/endnotes sparingly . It can be frustrating for a reader to jump between your main text and then subtexts written elsewhere. So try and include everything in your main text if you can (for instance in parenthesis).

Don’t assume your readers know what things mean . ‘When it comes to measures based on normative, formative indicators…’ What? You don’t know what ‘normative’ and ‘formative’ mean (and it’s not a music group, though the name ‘The Normative Formatives’ is pretty cool!). The point here, as above, is to spell things out so that the reader knows what you are talking about. If it’s brief you could do that in parenthesis in the sentence. If not, give it dedicated sentences.

Check the spell and grammar checkers . Those wiggly blue and red lines underneath your writing (on Microsoft Word) do mean something. Sometimes it’s just the software being over-sensitive, but it’s always worth checking and seeing what it’s picking up. If you’re software doesn’t do spell and grammar checks, it might be time to upgrade. You need something or someone else to give this a thorough check through before submitting any piece of work.

Make your file names meaningful . And finally, if you are sending out documents for assessments as digital files, give it a name that is going to mean something in someone else’s system. ‘Essay.doc’ or ‘Berne version 3 final’ is really not going to help your assessor know which is your submission—particularly in the midst of tens or hundreds of others. So make sure your surname is in the file title (unless the submission needs to be anonymised), and add a reference to the specific assignment: for instance, ‘Patel case study 1’. Adding a date of submission, or completion, is also very useful, though I would suggest always doing this in the format ‘year-month-day’ (rather than ‘day month year’), so that computers store more than one version of the file in the correct order (assuming the files are sorted alphabetically). So that gives you a file title like ‘Patel case study 1 2020-03-10’ and, with a name like that, it’s unlikely to get mixed up with anything else.

With many of these ‘rules’, the main thing is to be consistent. For instance, most markers won’t mind if you use double quotation marks rather than single, or italicising all your quotes, but the key thing is to do it all the way through. It’s when it’s changing that it gets confusing, because the reader thinks you might mean something by it, when in fact it just means you weren’t thinking about it. But how do we know?! Bear in mind, in particular, that your marker may have several assignments to work through, so anything that can help make their life easier is likely to be worth it. And the great thing is, once you get into these habits, they’ll stick with you for next time. As your academic level progresses, there will be more and more expectation that you’ll get these things ‘right’. So use the checklist to go through your first few assignments, and also ask a peer to scrutinise it using the checklist, and once you’re finding that you’re addressing the issues from the start you can stop using it.

Last thing, and I’ve already said this (so much for avoiding repetition!), but for a brilliantly concise and comprehensive guide to academic writing, go to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (now in its seventh edition). Keep it by your writing desk, your bedside, your toilet…. it’s an invaluable investment in terms of getting through your assignments, because it gives you a consistent and clear set of guidelines on everything from referencing to headings to writing style.

Actually, sorry, really really last thing, and I couldn’t end this blog without saying it because my students won’t recognise me. Times New Roman 12 point. That’s all you need. No Comic Sans, no Bahnschrift Light SemiCondensed. Just one, nice, clear font all the way through.

Keep it simple and let the glorious light of your creative genius through. Good luck!

Acknowledgements

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• Knowledge Base
• How to conclude an essay | Interactive example

How to Conclude an Essay | Interactive Example

Published on January 24, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The conclusion is the final paragraph of your essay . A strong conclusion aims to:

• Tie together the essay’s main points
• Show why your argument matters
• Leave the reader with a strong impression

Your conclusion should give a sense of closure and completion to your argument, but also show what new questions or possibilities it has opened up.

This conclusion is taken from our annotated essay example , which discusses the history of the Braille system. Hover over each part to see why it’s effective.

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

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Table of contents

Step 1: return to your thesis, step 2: review your main points, step 3: show why it matters, what shouldn’t go in the conclusion, more examples of essay conclusions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay conclusion.

To begin your conclusion, signal that the essay is coming to an end by returning to your overall argument.

Don’t just repeat your thesis statement —instead, try to rephrase your argument in a way that shows how it has been developed since the introduction.

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Next, remind the reader of the main points that you used to support your argument.

Avoid simply summarizing each paragraph or repeating each point in order; try to bring your points together in a way that makes the connections between them clear. The conclusion is your final chance to show how all the paragraphs of your essay add up to a coherent whole.

To wrap up your conclusion, zoom out to a broader view of the topic and consider the implications of your argument. For example:

• Does it contribute a new understanding of your topic?
• Does it raise new questions for future study?
• Does it lead to practical suggestions or predictions?
• Can it be applied to different contexts?
• Can it be connected to a broader debate or theme?

Whatever your essay is about, the conclusion should aim to emphasize the significance of your argument, whether that’s within your academic subject or in the wider world.

Try to end with a strong, decisive sentence, leaving the reader with a lingering sense of interest in your topic.

The easiest way to improve your conclusion is to eliminate these common mistakes.

Don’t include new evidence

Any evidence or analysis that is essential to supporting your thesis statement should appear in the main body of the essay.

The conclusion might include minor pieces of new information—for example, a sentence or two discussing broader implications, or a quotation that nicely summarizes your central point. But it shouldn’t introduce any major new sources or ideas that need further explanation to understand.

Don’t use “concluding phrases”

Avoid using obvious stock phrases to tell the reader what you’re doing:

• “In conclusion…”
• “To sum up…”

These phrases aren’t forbidden, but they can make your writing sound weak. By returning to your main argument, it will quickly become clear that you are concluding the essay—you shouldn’t have to spell it out.

Don’t undermine your argument

Avoid using apologetic phrases that sound uncertain or confused:

• “This is just one approach among many.”
• “There are good arguments on both sides of this issue.”
• “There is no clear answer to this problem.”

Even if your essay has explored different points of view, your own position should be clear. There may be many possible approaches to the topic, but you want to leave the reader convinced that yours is the best one!

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• Argumentative
• Literary analysis

This conclusion is taken from an argumentative essay about the internet’s impact on education. It acknowledges the opposing arguments while taking a clear, decisive position.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

This conclusion is taken from a short expository essay that explains the invention of the printing press and its effects on European society. It focuses on giving a clear, concise overview of what was covered in the essay.

The invention of the printing press was important not only in terms of its immediate cultural and economic effects, but also in terms of its major impact on politics and religion across Europe. In the century following the invention of the printing press, the relatively stationary intellectual atmosphere of the Middle Ages gave way to the social upheavals of the Reformation and the Renaissance. A single technological innovation had contributed to the total reshaping of the continent.

This conclusion is taken from a literary analysis essay about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . It summarizes what the essay’s analysis achieved and emphasizes its originality.

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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Your essay’s conclusion should contain:

• A rephrased version of your overall thesis
• A brief review of the key points you made in the main body
• An indication of why your argument matters

The conclusion may also reflect on the broader implications of your argument, showing how your ideas could applied to other contexts or debates.

For a stronger conclusion paragraph, avoid including:

• Important evidence or analysis that wasn’t mentioned in the main body
• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

The conclusion paragraph of an essay is usually shorter than the introduction . As a rule, it shouldn’t take up more than 10–15% of the text.

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Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Counseling — Mental Health Counseling Admission

Mental Health Counseling Admission

• Categories: Code of Ethics Counseling Substance Abuse

About this sample

Words: 748 |

Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 748 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, personal background and motivation, academic and professional preparation, interpersonal and communication skills, knowledge of mental health counseling field, personal characteristics and attributes, career goals and future aspirations.

• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2018). The Importance of Mental Health: Parity for Mental Health and Substance Use. https://www.samhsa.gov/behavioral-health-equity/parity-mental-health-substance-use.
• American Psychological Association. (2019). Becoming a Psychologist: Mental Health Counseling. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/2014/09/becoming-a-psychologist.
• National Alliance on Mental Illness. (2021). Mental Health Conditions. https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-conditions.
• American Counseling Association. (2018). 2018 ACA Code of Ethics. https://www.counseling.org/resources/aca-code-of-ethics.pdf.

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Schneier on Security

Home Essays

In Memoriam: Ross Anderson, 1956-2024

• Communications of the ACM
• April 9, 2024

Ross Anderson unexpectedly passed away in his sleep on March 28th in his home in Cambridge. He was 67.

I can’t remember when I first met Ross. It was well before 2008, when we created the Security and Human Behavior workshop. It was before 2001, when we created the Workshop on Economics and Information Security (okay, he created that one, I just helped). It was before 1998, when we first wrote about the insecurity of key escrow systems. In 1996, I was one of the people he brought to the Newton Institute at Cambridge University, for the six-month cryptography residency program he ran (I made a mistake not staying the whole time)—so it was before then as well.

I know I was at the first Fast Software Encryption workshop in December 1993, the first conference he created. There, I presented the Blowfish encryption algorithm. Pulling an old first edition of Applied Cryptography (the one with the blue cover) down from my shelf, I see his name in the acknowledgments. This means that at either the 1992 Crypto conference in Santa Barbara or the 1993 Eurocrypt in Lofthus, Norway, I, as an unpublished book author who had written a few cryptography articles for Dr. Dobb’s Journal , asked him to read and comment on my book manuscript. And he said yes. Which means I mailed him a paper copy. And he read it, and mailed his handwritten comments back to me. In an envelope with stamps. Because that’s how we did it back then.

This is back when "crypto" meant cryptography, and we would laugh when military types said "cyber" or "cybersecurity." We all called it "computer security" and then "Internet security."

I have known Ross for over 30 years, both as a colleague and a friend. He was enthusiastic, brilliant, opinionated, articulate, curmudgeonly, and kind. Pick up any of his academic papers and articles—there are 302 entries on his webpage —and odds are that you will find at least one unexpected insight that will change how you think about security. He was a security engineer, but also very much a generalist. He published on block cipher cryptanalysis in the 1990s, on the security of large-language models last year, and on pretty much everything else in between.

His masterwork book, Security Engineering —1,200 pages in its third edition—illustrates that breadth. It is as comprehensive a tome on computer security and related topics as you could imagine. Twenty-nine chapters cover everything from access control to tamper resistance, from banking security to nuclear command and control, and from psychology to security printing. Every page is infused with his knowledge, expertise, wisdom, and uncanny ability to cut through the nonsense that too often surrounds traditional security disciplines. (Also note his 15-lecture video series on that same webpage. If you have never heard Ross lecture, you’re in for a treat.)

Ross was a pragmatic visionary. His mastery of both the technologies and the underlying policy issues showed a deep command of multiple fields , and a rare capability to both work within them and synthesize around them. He was also able to weave this knowledge into narratives that were both compelling and comprehensible to the layperson. In his 1993 paper " Why Cryptosystems Fail ," he pointed out that both cryptography and computer security got threat modeling all wrong, and that we were solving the wrong problems. It’s not the math, he wrote; it’s the implementation and the people and the procedures. In 2001, he was the first person to recognize that security problems are often actually economic problems , kick-starting the academic discipline of security economics.

He didn’t suffer fools in either government or the corporate world, giving them no quarter by disproving their security claims. As a graduate student, he defended people accused of stealing from ATM machines by banks who maintained that their security was foolproof. It was a pattern that repeated itself throughout his career: analyze a real-world security system from all angles, understand how it fails, and then publish the results—angering the powers in charge of that security system.

Here’s one example of many. In 2014, he was hired as an expert witness to defend people accused of tampering with the curfew tags used for offender monitoring. He studied the physical tags and their security, and also the economic, policy, and security implications of the tagging system. He even went as far as to wear an ankle bracelet himself. It promptly broke, proving his point. You can read the whole story in Chapter 14 of the third edition of his book.

That sense of justice and confronting power infused much of his work. He fought against surveillance and backdoors. He and I were part of the second and third academic take-downs of government attempts to break encryption. His 2022 rebuttal of child protection as a pretense to break encryption is particularly scathing.

Ross also fought for academic freedom, repeatedly publishing his findings in the face of corporate threats. Many things we all use are more secure today because of Ross’s work.

He was a blistering letter writer to those he believed deserved it. Verbally, he could be a hurricane in your face if he disagreed with you, but he would also engage with your points and was always willing to change his mind. And he enthused about, argued with, and listened to everybody: students, colleagues, partners of students and colleagues, random people he crossed paths with. Everyone was a sounding board for whatever ideas he had in is head.

And his head was constantly filled with ideas—mostly good, some not so good—and seemingly inexhaustible energy to implement them. He founded five different conferences, including the Information Hiding Workshop and Decepticon. He co-founded the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre . He founded the U.K.’s Foundation for Information Policy Research , and wrote most of the papers that the organization submitted to Parliamentary Inquiries on dumb legislative ideas. When the legislative center of power moved to Brussels, he helped form the European Digital Rights organization to provide advice there.

All this was part of his gift of fostering community. And it’s nowhere more evident than his legacy of graduate students at Cambridge University. His CV lists thirty-two of them, and seven more that he was currently advising. Many have carried his legacy of pragmatic security analysis of real-world systems.

Ross was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the British Computer Society’s Lovelace Medal, the U.K.’s top prize in computing. From 2021, he split his time as a professor between the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2023. He was absolutely rageful against Cambridge University for making him retire at 67—and he was right.

He also play ed the bagpipes throughout his life. I dedicated a 1998 cryptography paper, " The Street Performer Protocol ," to him because he "spent some of his youth busking on the streets of Germany with his bagpipes." Those were good stories.

He is listed in the acknowledgments as a reader of every one of my books from Beyond Fear on. Recently, we’d see each other a couple of times a year, at this or that workshop or event. He hosted me at Security and Human Behavor at Cambridge’s Churchill College in 2022. The last time I saw him was last June at SHB in Pittsburgh. We were having dinner on Alessandro Acquisti ‘s rooftop patio to celebrate another successful workshop. He was going to attend my Workshop on Reimagining Democracy in December 2023, but had to cancel at the last minute. The day before he died, we were discussing how to accommodate everyone who registered for this year’s SHB workshop in December. I learned something from him every single time we talked. And I am not the only one.

My heart goes out to his wife Shireen, their daughter Bavani, and the rest of their family. We lost him much too soon.

Categories: Computer and Information Security

Tags: Communications of the ACM

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.

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NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias

An essay from an editor at the broadcaster has generated a firestorm of criticism about the network on social media, especially among conservatives.

By Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson

NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

Mr. Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major news events, including the origins of Covid-19 and the war in Gaza. He also said the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

Mr. Berliner’s essay has ignited a firestorm of criticism of NPR on social media, especially among conservatives who have long accused the network of political bias in its reporting. Former President Donald J. Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to argue that NPR’s government funding should be rescinded, an argument he has made in the past.

NPR has forcefully pushed back on Mr. Berliner’s accusations and the criticism.

“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” Edith Chapin, the organization’s editor in chief, said in an email to staff on Tuesday. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.” Some other NPR journalists also criticized the essay publicly, including Eric Deggans, its TV critic, who faulted Mr. Berliner for not giving NPR an opportunity to comment on the piece.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay, saying he loved NPR and hoped to make it better by airing criticisms that have gone unheeded by leaders for years. He called NPR a “national trust” that people rely on for fair reporting and superb storytelling.

“I decided to go out and publish it in hopes that something would change, and that we get a broader conversation going about how the news is covered,” Mr. Berliner said.

He said he had not been disciplined by managers, though he said he had received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR requires employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. He said he didn’t run his remarks to The New York Times by network spokespeople.

When the hosts of NPR’s biggest shows, including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” convened on Wednesday afternoon for a long-scheduled meet-and-greet with the network’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher , conversation soon turned to Mr. Berliner’s essay, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. During the lunch, Ms. Chapin told the hosts that she didn’t want Mr. Berliner to become a “martyr,” the people said.

Mr. Berliner’s essay also sent critical Slack messages whizzing through some of the same employee affinity groups focused on racial and sexual identity that he cited in his essay. In one group, several staff members disputed Mr. Berliner’s points about a lack of ideological diversity and said efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better.

On Wednesday, staff members from “Morning Edition” convened to discuss the fallout from Mr. Berliner’s essay. During the meeting, an NPR producer took issue with Mr. Berliner’s argument for why NPR’s listenership has fallen off, describing a variety of factors that have contributed to the change.

Mr. Berliner’s remarks prompted vehement pushback from several news executives. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices, said in an interview that he rejected all of Mr. Berliner’s claims of unfairness, adding that his remarks would probably make it harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.

“The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories, you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” Mr. Cavin said.

Some journalists have defended Mr. Berliner’s essay. Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR’s former ombudsman, said Mr. Berliner was “not wrong” on social media. Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Mr. Berliner’s essay “brave” on Facebook.

Mr. Berliner’s criticism was the latest salvo within NPR, which is no stranger to internal division. In October, Mr. Berliner took part in a lengthy debate over whether NPR should defer to language proposed by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association while covering the conflict in Gaza.

“We don’t need to rely on an advocacy group’s guidance,” Mr. Berliner wrote, according to a copy of the email exchange viewed by The Times. “Our job is to seek out the facts and report them.” The debate didn’t change NPR’s language guidance, which is made by editors who weren’t part of the discussion. And in a statement on Thursday, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association said it is a professional association for journalists, not a political advocacy group.

Mr. Berliner’s public criticism has highlighted broader concerns within NPR about the public broadcaster’s mission amid continued financial struggles. Last year, NPR cut 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts, including the popular “Invisibilia,” as it tried to make up for a $30 million budget shortfall. Listeners have drifted away from traditional radio to podcasts, and the advertising market has been unsteady.

In his essay, Mr. Berliner laid some of the blame at the feet of NPR’s former chief executive, John Lansing, who said he was retiring at the end of last year after four years in the role. He was replaced by Ms. Maher, who started on March 25.

During a meeting with employees in her first week, Ms. Maher was asked what she thought about decisions to give a platform to political figures like Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican Party chair whose position as a political analyst at NBC News became untenable after an on-air revolt from hosts who criticized her efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

“I think that this conversation has been one that does not have an easy answer,” Ms. Maher responded.

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact Ben securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or email at [email protected] . More about Benjamin Mullin

Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email:  [email protected]   More about Katie Robertson

Counseling and Social Work Challenges

Counseling and social work belong to the number of fields that involve quite close association with clients who are seeking for help and valuable advice. Even though all the future specialists are encouraged to be as fair as possible during the work with clients, some issues may occur and make the work less effective. Among these issues, there are prejudice and bias. It usually happens that such problems are caused by numerous stereotypes that people support. Although many people understand that it is inappropriate to make conclusions about people based on their nationality, race, appearance, personal preferences, and habits, they may keep laughing at jokes connected to these differences between people. Thus, the person supports certain stereotypes about people forgetting that it can make collaboration between different people less effective (Rogers & Pilgrim, 2014). I suppose that it can be an issue for me in my future work because it is sometimes hard to avoid making conclusions about people at once. I do not consider myself a person who cannot stand the lifestyles of other people, but sometimes I meet people who look or behave just like ones who hurt me, and it can be not easy to distract from these thoughts. Also, the same can be true for clients; they can be suspicious due to their aversion to something about the specialist, and it may also be necessary to teach the clients to be more open-minded.

There is no doubt that counselors and other people related to mental health programs advocate for diversity and parity of services because equal access to healthcare services is an indispensable feature of any developed society (Goodyear et al., 2016). Speaking about mental health, it is necessary to show that people can be provided with help and support, and nobody is going to blame them for some features that they cannot change. To put it in other words, it is inappropriate to deprive some people of the right to maintain their mental health. As for the contribution that I can make into the development of these ideas, I am ready to extend my knowledge on the topic, work with clients from different social groups, and encourage my colleagues to support these ideas as well. I believe that cooperation between co-workers can be regarded as a force for change.

There are a lot of approaches that can be used to accept other people. To begin with, it can be important to study the history of the region I am living more thoroughly. I suppose that it can help me understand national diversity and the contribution of each group of people to the country’s development. Furthermore, it is necessary to pay more attention to communication with different people and study how to establish contacts with them more effectively. Also, it may be important to try to work with different people and assess the impact that individual differences have on the work results. Therefore, it will be possible to become more experienced and understand the difference between real problems and stereotypes.

What is more, I suppose that traveling can also be a good idea as it encourages people to learn something new and have a fresh look at common things. In the end, I suppose that understanding the perspectives of other people is impossible without collaboration with them. So, it may be important to become a part of a working group where people of different origins do their best to achieve a common goal.

Goodyear, R., Lichtenberg, J., Hutman, H., Overland, E., Bedi, R., Christiani, K., & Grant, J. (2016). A global portrait of counselling psychologists’ characteristics, perspectives, and professional behaviors. Counselling Psychology Quarterly , 29 (2), 115-138.

Rogers, A., & Pilgrim, D. (2014). A sociology of mental health and illness . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 23). Counseling and Social Work Challenges. https://ivypanda.com/essays/counseling-and-social-work-challenges/

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IvyPanda . 2023. "Counseling and Social Work Challenges." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/counseling-and-social-work-challenges/.

1. IvyPanda . "Counseling and Social Work Challenges." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/counseling-and-social-work-challenges/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Counseling and Social Work Challenges." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/counseling-and-social-work-challenges/.

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