About Your Counsellor Dr Greg Mulhauser

Dr Greg Mulhauser formerly provided online counselling and online therapy services to clients from all over the world. You can read more about him here, or read separately about his practice philosophy.

Note

Please note that this page has not been actively maintained for several years, as I have not been in active practice as a counsellor and psychotherapist for some time. The Mulhauser Consulting site provides links to some of my more current activities in behavioural healthcare and mental health, general human and animal health, finance and investments, and technology.

Scope

This page specifically focuses on my relevant professional and educational details as they relate to counselling and psychotherapy. For a broader synopsis of my background, you can read more at CounsellingResource.com, while other background material is available at Mulhauser Consulting.

Educational Background

My educational background includes a BA, awarded Summa Cum Laude (with Highest Honors) in Philosophy and Mathematics from Willamette University, which I attended 1987-91 as a National Merit Scholar. I subsequently completed a PhD in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Edinburgh, which I attended 1991-94 as a British Marshall Scholar. My PhD research, which addressed fundamental questions about self-awareness and the nature of consciousness, drew on a wide variety of material ranging from theoretical cognitive science to chaos theory. Immediately after completing the PhD, I held a one-year Gifford Research Fellowship at the University of Glasgow 1994-95.

After taking time out to re-write my doctoral dissertation as the book Mind Out of Matter, and after five years in research and industry, in 2002-03 I completed an intensive one-year, full-time Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling at the University of East Anglia. (CounsellingResource.com carries a page on Selecting a Counsellor, which also includes some information about comparing counsellor qualifications.)

This BACP-accredited Postgraduate Diploma included roughly 190 hours of theory, roughly 150 hours of skills training (also incorporating group and peer supervision), roughly 115 hours of group ‘community’ time covering a range of topics, and roughly 60 hours of personal development time. Clinical contact time at two different supervised placements was over 100 hours, with 23 hours of individual clinical supervision. Total scheduled time for the course amounted to approximately 650 hours. In addition, I completed around 39,000 words of written work. (For comparison, my PhD weighed in at around 100,000 words.) The Postgraduate Diploma itself focused primarily on the person-centred approach to counselling. I simultaneously undertook independent study in a range of other areas, focusing particularly on cognitive behavioural therapy and existential counselling.

During this time, I also began developing my first site dedicated specifically to counselling and psychotherapy, CounsellingResource.com, and I began providing online therapy services there in 2003. Five years and over 1 million words of online counselling and therapy later, I founded this separate online therapy platform.

Following the diploma, I continued seeing face-to-face clients for several months both at the university and at a local general medical centre.

Experience With Electronic Communications

Before training in counselling, I worked for five years in various parts of British Telecommunications, including their research and technology subsidiary, known at the time as BTexact Technologies. Originally employed as a technologist and researcher and later in business strategy and marketing, I worked in an environment permeated by some of the most advanced communications technology available anywhere in the world. The culture, the training, and the standard operating methods of the business all treated effective electronic communication as central and indispensable. Advanced online technologies were not just cool new gadgets: they were central to how we did business.

I also spent most of my time with BT as a ‘teleworker’, meaning that I relied on electronic communications to work effectively with geographically dispersed teams. (At the time, BT had — and perhaps still does have — the single largest contingent of teleworking employees anywhere in Europe.) Having managed ‘virtual teams’ of up to a dozen people using electronic communications technology, I feel at home with a wide variety of electronic communications tools. Of particular relevance to my internet-mediated counselling practice, my most recent post with BT focused on communications security.

In addition to my formal working background immersed in communications technology, I have used the internet since the 1980s and the worldwide web since it was a relatively small CERN research project, dwarfed in size by the now-extinct text-only system called ‘gopher’.

Client Diversity

I have worked with male and female clients covering an age range from 18 to nearly 80. The scope of concerns which my clients explore grows continuously, but just to give some idea with a non-exhaustive list, my previous clients have shared details of experiences like depression; sexual, physical and psychological abuse; dissociative identity disorder; obsessive thoughts and behaviours; pronounced mood swings, including manic depression; family chaos resulting from problems including infidelity, divorce, unplanned pregnancy and psychiatric illness; relationships and self-esteem; self-described paranoia; physical disability; anxieties about instabilities in relationships and living circumstances; career plans; the meaning of life; exam anxiety; anger; acute sleeping and eating disruptions; and many other topics.

In addition to this wide range of concerns I am happy to explore with clients, I also have particular personal interests in counselling for bipolar disorder (manic depression) and the less severe cyclic mood disorder cyclothymia; cognitive approaches to anxiety, including panic attacks, or ‘anxiety attacks’, and obsessive-compulsive disorder; counselling and chronic pain; and fundamental questions about existence.

Professional Counselling Organizations

When in active practice, I have always been a Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP), bound by its Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy and its Ethical Guidelines for Researching Counselling and Psychotherapy and subject to the organization’s Professional Conduct Procedure. (See note below on the MBACP designation and my having opted to stop renewing my annual membership after having been away from active practice for nearly 3 years.) I am conscientiously not a member of the International Society for Mental Health Online. Because I believe they provide the most well thought-out guidelines for the online provision of mental health services, I also voluntarily abide by the internet counselling ethics guidelines of the United States National Board for Certified Counselors.

I hold Enhanced Disclosure from the UK’s Criminal Records Bureau, a clearance level "reserved for positions involving the greatest degree of trust". (See the Disclosure Service or the main CRB site.)

Alphabet Soup

Here’s an explanation of the acronyms (alphabet soup) which go at the end of my name for formal purposes, including links which can be used to secure independent verification of my qualifications. Although it is fairly common to append initials for every 3-day certificate and 6-hour training course at the end of a practitioner’s name, I prefer not to do so; unless a designation indicates at least a year of study or (in the case of the RSA) a significant honour recognized nationally or internationally, it is not included.

Dr Greg Mulhauser, BA, PhD, DipCouns, FRSA:

• BA: Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude, Highest Honors) in 1991 from Willamette University, attended as a National Merit Scholar. Double Major in Philosophy and Mathematics.
• PhD: Doctorate in Philosophy of Mind from the University of Edinburgh as a British Marshall Scholar, completed in 1994 and awarded in 1995. Revised version of dissertation published in 1998 as the book Mind Out of Matter.
• DipCouns: Intensive Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling completed in 2003 at the University of East Anglia.
• FRSA: Not a qualification. FRSA denotes Fellowship in the Royal Society of Arts (elected to Fellowship in 1998, at an age several years younger than the normally required minimum age at the time).
• Formerly: MBACP: Not a qualification. MBACP denotes the BACP membership category entitled to use the designatory letters ‘MBACP’, in my case reflecting the BACP-accredited nature of my counselling and psychotherapy training. Up until April 2005, this category was known as ‘Registered Associate’.* Having left active practice at the end of 2008 for a sequence of ever-extending sabbaticals to pursue other projects, as of 1 October 2011 I decided not to keep renewing my membership in BACP and have accordingly dropped the ‘MBACP’ designation.

* Note: The ‘MBACP’ designation, in my opinion, reflects little more than the BACP’s ongoing attempts to market itself to the general public and the government as an authoritative body of ‘experts’ and judge of expertise. The ‘MBACP’ moniker provides free advertising for the BACP and exerts indirect pressure on those of us who are qualified to use it to do so, since it would otherwise be conspicuous by its absence.