On becoming a counsellor: a posthuman reconfiguring of identity formation for counsellors-in-training

Processes of identity formation have long been a consideration for the field of counselling. Undertaking counselling education can be a fraught time for student counsellors, with increased anxiety and stress, and educators and researchers need to better grasp the complexities inherent in the development of new counsellors. This paper reviews research drawing on humanistic understandings of identity for counsellors-in-training before engaging with the recent ontological turn to a posthuman framework, emergent across the social sciences. Through attention to the emergence of the tears of counsellors-in-training in counselling encounters, a posthuman reconceptualising of “becoming-counsellor” is put forward. Such an orientation produces a shift to entangled, dynamic, iterative processes of becoming, with attention to myriad forces shaping counsellor identities.