Counselling Section Overview

Diagram: the vicious cycle driving a client’s problem gambling.

Vicious cycles can drive human problems, like problem gambling, and understanding these cycles can support change. I detail how a counsellor can use these vicious cycles in their counselling sessions with a client. Established therapeutic methods support these ideas. I propose that a self-organising system of feedback cycles organises human behaviour.

This is the introduction & overview page for the counselling section of the website. It has links to my pages on this topic.

The two other topics covered by this website each have an overview page:

You can explore each topic from its overview page and follow the links that interest you.

Counselling pages

Here is one approach I used as a counsellor with my clients, along with the theory that underpins it.

I include an example counselling session in which a broad discussion of the client’s presenting problem enabled me to identify a possible vicious cycle driving the client’s problem and then share it with the client. I often found this to be a productive way of engaging clients. The session details how I did this.

I also describe an understanding of human behaviour grounded in systems theory and its feedback cycles. This framework emerged from my eclectic counselling practice and integrates elements from a range of established therapeutic approaches and related fields. Separate pages explore this framework through the lenses of:

The Cyclic intervention in brief

To give you an idea of where we are going, here is the cyclic intervention I used.

During a counselling session with my client Zed, I identified a vicious cycle that was a revelation to him. (Zed is a fictional client.)

You gamble more to feel respected – that’s when you are winning.Damage: You lose more money & respect
You need more respect.

During the session, we built a diagram of key parts of his story. The vicious cycle emerged from this diagram, and I summed it up, saying to him, “There is a cycle here: (1) the more you gamble to feel respected, while on winning streaks, (2) the more money you lose and the less respect you get at home and at work, so (3) the more you need respect, and (4) this throws you back to gamble more. This vicious cycle is making your life very difficult.”

The method for generating and using the cyclic intervention is critical: the page describing the example counselling session details this.

Relevant to any problematic habit

I developed and used these interventions during my ten years working as a problem gambling counsellor; however, the theories underlying the intervention are generic, suggesting that this sort of intervention could assist counsellors working with any problem, including drug and alcohol addictions and compulsive behaviour.

The development of these ideas

I developed my use of these cyclic interventions by:

  • Working as a problem gambling counsellor for ten years
  • Using the evolving ideas in my daily work
  • Trying to understand the madness of problem gambling
  • Working with other counsellors each week as a reflective family therapy team. They saw how I worked, encouraged me and guided me. One counsellor lent me a book on family therapy. She was right. Systems theory supported the cyclic logic that I was using
  • Presenting at five conferences, e.g. Australian Family Therapy Conference 1998;
  • Completing a master’s degree based on research into my counselling practice (Gunner, 2002)
  • Writing a journal article (Gunner, 2006)
  • Preparing these web pages in 2025

The Victorian Gambling Research Panel

The Victorian Government’s “Gambling Research Panel” report, “Best Practice in Problem Gambling Services” (June 2003, p. 87), included a section on my Master of Social Work research into counselling problem gamblers with cyclic interventions. In part, the report stated:

Theory Building from Clinical Practice: Developing the Feedback Framework for Problem Gambling Development and Recovery.

… The framework appears to offer practical concepts and interventions for problem gambling counsellors and their clients, based on the solid foundations of systems theory (Maruyama, 1968) and recognised therapists such as Weinberg (1995) and Malan (1979).
 
The Framework incorporates and supports Cognitive behavioural ideas on relapse prevention, as well as ideas derived from psychodynamic theory, suggesting that problem gambling can repress worries and become a defence against these worries; it provides a theoretical basis that encourages problem gambling counsellors to attend to their client’s worries, from conscious boredom to unconscious dread. …

In practice, the framework provides a structure for understanding how cognitive therapy, behavioural therapy, and psychodynamic therapy can influence problem gambling. It suggests that each therapy tackles problem gambling by breaking the amplifying loops underlying it in different places. Cognitive therapy strategies tackle the pro-gambling mentality, denial, and self-tricking thinking, and thereby the gambling and the worries. Behavioural therapy strategies tackle the gambling behaviour, and thereby the ideas and worries. Psychodynamic therapy strategies tackle the dread, and thereby the ideas and gambling. 

One achievement of the framework is this capacity to integrate various therapeutic theories within the one intervention, as psychodynamic theory is often seen to conflict with cognitive and behavioural therapy.”
 
(Jackson, Thomas, and Blaszczynski: 2003, p 87, 88)

One of these authors, Professor Alun Jackson, was my academic supervisor at the University of Melbourne for the three years of my master’s degree research.

Comment from a neuropsychiatrist.

Dr Georges Otte, a Belgian clinical neuropsychiatrist, supported my article (Gunner, 2006) via a now-defunct internet forum called the “Society for Chaos Theory in Psychological & Life Sciences.” He wrote:

  “Here, we have a single concrete explanatory framework of many concepts that we, as clinical therapists, use in our daily clinical practice. It has the huge merit of presenting this clearly and being biologically plausible, theoretically valid, and practically oriented. One does not need a 500-page manual; the journal article is sufficient. This framework is ready for use with the next patient, whatever the problem presented.”  

Wind up

My description of one counselling session shows how I used cyclic interventions with my clients. I used these interventions because they gave me a constructive way of viewing and assisting my clients’ problem gambling.

I am now retired and have written this because the ideas have always excited me, and I hope that other counsellors will find them helpful. In the past few months, these ideas have developed, but now without the support of my counselling practice.

Your comments on this

There will be some rough edges to these pages. I welcome constructive comments.

All Counselling References

These are the references for all the counselling pages.

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Capra, F (1997). The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter, London: Flamingo/HarperCollins.

Gunner, A. (2002). Problem Gambling Development and Recovery: A Reflective Counsellor’s Practical Construction Based on Feedback. An unpublished MSW thesis, School of Social Work, University of Melbourne.

Gunner, A. (2006). Feedback Loops in Clinical Practice: An Integrative Framework: Australian & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy. Volume 27, Number 3.

Jackson A, Thomas S & Blaszczynski A (2003). Best Practice in Problem Gambling Services, Melbourne, Victorian Government Gambling Research Panel.

Malan D (1979). Individual Psychotherapy and the Science of Psychodynamics, Cambridge, Butterworth.

Maruyama M (1968). The Second Cybernetics: Deviation Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes, in Buckley W, Modern Systems Research for the Behavioural Scientist, Chicago, Aldine, page 304.
See the Maruyama article.

Moreno, J. L., (1964). Psychodrama, Volume 1, New York, Beacon House.

Nichols, M. P. (2008). Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, 8th edition: Boston, Allyn and Bacon.

Watts, D. (2003). Six Degrees: The Science of the Connected Age, London, Heinemann.

Weinberg G (1981). The Pliant Animal, New York, St Martin’s Press.

Weinberg, G. (1995). Invisible Masters: Compulsions and the Fear That Drives Them, London, Sphere Books.

Weinberg G (1996). The Heart of Psychotherapy, New York, St Martin’s Griffin.

Senge (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organisation, Sydney, Random House

Related pages

Links to the counselling pages are at the top of this page.

Overviews of the other topics covered

The two other topics covered by this website each have an overview page:

You can explore each topic from its overview page and follow the links that interest you.

First loaded: 19 Dec 2025: Updated 26 Feb 2026