The Alternative COunselling Research Network (ACORN) currently considers of Profs. Digby Tantam, Emmy van Deurzen, and Dr. Darren Langdridge.

ACORN  has been set up to challenge the hegemony of manualized psychotherapies, like cognitive  behavioural therapy, which have generated a substantial number of successful outcome studies.  Not in itself a bad thing, of course, but in the current climate of evidence-based practice, therapies without outcome studies to their name are not considered to be established and effective.  CBT has therefore become the main, and sometimes the only, treatment that the UK Government and government agencies endorse.

We in ACORN do not consider that showing that our existentially-orientated approach has the same outcome as CBT in alleviating symptoms will do anything more than perpetuate this kind of symptom orientated thinking.  We accept that many clients do want relief from distress, anxiety, or depression, and that it is important that they receive it.  But their needs are increasingly the focus of psychotherapy services development.  

We are much more concerned about the neglected group of unhappy people who manage from day to day, but whose lives lack meaning or purpose, and who use over-eating, alcohol, smoking or other quick fixes to try to give themselves a brief sense of wellbeing which otherwise they rarely experiene.  We want to focus on improving wellbeing, and not just on ameliorating symptoms.  We think that the existential approach is the way to do this, but we have an open mind.  We want to test this hypothesis.

The first ACORN project will therefore be a study of the clients of existential practitioners to see if, in the estimation of the clients and of the therapists, their well being is increased as a result of completing the therapy, and if this amounts to more than a relief of symptoms.

We have devised a short before and after test of this, which can be completed by a client online.  We hope to recruit a substantial number of clients in this project, so that our results have statistical significance, and cannot just be put down to chance by people who scrutinize them.

If you would like to see the questions we will be asking, read further about the project, or correspond with an ACORN member about this project, follow one of these links: