Counselling Section Introduction

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

I worked as a problem gambling counsellor for ten years and want to share one way of working with problem gambling clients.

This page:

  • Introduces the counselling section of this website
  • Describes the process by which I developed these ideas
  • Links to all the other counselling pages on this website
  • Contains the counselling references to other authors

Vicious cycles can drive human problems, such as 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.

See the example counselling session.

I am confident that this way of counselling could assist a wide range of clients, as it has emerged from counselling practice and draws on established counselling theories and methods. Here are my pages describing the incorporation of:

The bedrock of this integration is systems theory and its feedback cycles. It forms a practical understanding of human behaviour as presented on:

In considering, for example, whether a psychodynamic defence can form an amplifying feedback cycle, I have examined amplifying feedback cycles in other systems:

I briefly touch on complementary branches of systems theory: Chaos theory, which shows how feedback can produce complexity, unpredictability, and instability, and self-organisation, which shows how feedback can produce order.

Some therapists have focused on change and paradox, so I’ve examined the circular logic of paradox.

The Cyclic intervention in brief

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

In a counselling session with client Zed, I identified a vicious cycle that drove his gambling. It was a revelation to him. (Zed is a fictional client.)

You gamble more because when you win, you feel respected.Damage: You lose more money & respect
You need more respect.

Diagram: Zed’s vicious gambling cycle

As we talked, I wrote keywords that he used on a whiteboard diagram under three headings: (1) what he liked about gambling, (2) what he disliked, and (3) other issues in his life. The above vicious cycle emerged from this larger diagram. 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 difficult.”

The process of generating and explaining the cyclic intervention is critical; the page describing the example counselling session details this process.

Relevant to any problematic habit

I developed and used these interventions while 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 and encouraged 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., the Australian Family Therapy Conference in 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 and 2026.

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.”  

(You might find my article a useful starting point for reading these web pages.)

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 others will find them helpful. These ideas are still developing as I write these web pages and receive comments.

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.

Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch (1974). Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, W.W. Norton & Company, London)

Weinberg, G. (1969). The Action Approach: How your personality developed and how you can change it. Signet Classics, New York.

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

 
Developing from my use of cyclic logic in my counselling work, I saw various established counselling methods in terms of systems theory with its feedback cycles. I bring these strands together in my page covering:

First loaded: 19 Dec 2025; Changed 21 July 2026.