A Grounded Approach to Psychotherapy

My approach to psychotherapy is based on a simple premise: both theory and practice should remain grounded in direct experience. This requires ongoing engagement in empirical research, as well as sustained personal development on the part of the practitioner.

The aim is to ensure that understanding remains closely connected to the realities encountered in therapeutic work.

This page introduces this approach and explains how it differs from the mainstream model.

Choosing a Therapist

The public is usually invited to choose between therapists on the basis of their theoretical orientation — person-centred, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, existential, or otherwise.

However, more fundamental distinctions exist within the profession. These concern the way therapists engage with the psychological life of their clients.

Two distinctions are particularly important.

The first distinction is between therapists who adopt a predominantly receptive posture and those whose work is more investigative.

The second distinction applies within this latter group. It concerns the difference between approaches that rely primarily on learned theories and those grounded in direct investigation of psychological phenomena.

While most therapists relate to their clients’ psychological life through the application of pre-existing theories — which tend, in practice, to function as doctrines — I approach it through direct investigation, supported by a grounded theoretical framework.

At stake here is an epistemological difference: a difference in how one relates to psychological reality itself.

The benefit for you is not simply to be “understood”, but to be supported in developing a deep, reliable, and transformative understanding of yourself and others.

This page outlines these distinctions and clarifies my position within the field of psychotherapy.

Investigative Versus Receptive Psychotherapy

When presenting their work, many psychotherapists emphasise the relational dimension of therapy. They describe the provision of a particular type of relationship as the primary therapeutic factor.

This emphasis often corresponds to a style of practice that is essentially receptive. The therapist’s role is primarily to listen, sometimes in silence or with minimal intervention.

This may take place in a warm and empathic atmosphere, as in person-centred counselling, where the therapist trusts the client’s capacity to find their own way forward. Alternatively, it may occur in a more detached setting, as in psychodynamic work, where emphasis is placed on processes such as transference — the idea that feelings and desires originally associated with significant figures in the client’s life may be unconsciously displaced onto the therapist, thereby becoming therapeutically meaningful.

This receptive posture is also adopted by therapists who recognise the limits of their interpretive abilities and consider that their most appropriate contribution lies in attentive listening.

Listening is, of course, essential. Clients need to be heard. They need a space in which thoughts and feelings can be expressed freely and received in confidentiality and without judgement. Frequently, the relationship itself is experienced as therapeutic.

However, for many people, this is not sufficient.

They do not only want to be heard and accepted — they also want to understand, and to be supported in understanding themselves and their lives more clearly.

This leads to a second style of therapy: investigative psychotherapy.

Investigative work involves an active process of clarification, pattern recognition, and meaning development. It proceeds through inquiry and dialogue, rather than through listening alone.

This is the style I practise.

However, investigative therapy itself can be approached in different ways.

Grounded Versus Doctrine-driven Psychotherapy

If psychotherapy is to be genuinely investigative, it requires a reliable foundation.

In most cases, therapists rely on theories learned during their training and apply them to their work with clients. These theories are typically acquired through study and supported by experiential exercises, but they are not developed through direct engagement with empirical research, nor through sustained processes of testing, evaluation, and revision.

In practice, theories tend to function as doctrinal frameworks: sets of concepts that are accepted and applied, rather than continuously examined and reworked.

This helps explain why therapists are usually identified by their theoretical orientation. They present themselves as representatives of particular frameworks — person-centred, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, and so on.

While this is standard practice within the profession, it raises a difficulty.

From a client’s perspective, it introduces an additional layer of complexity. Beyond choosing a qualified and suitable practitioner, one is expected to select a theoretical orientation—often without the necessary knowledge to do so.

The issue is not the use of theory itself. Theory is essential to investigative work.

The issue lies in the way it is used.

When theory precedes and governs observation, rather than emerging from it, it risks becoming detached from the reality it is meant to describe.

Training structures tend to reinforce this pattern. Therapists are taught theoretical models and encouraged to apply them, but are rarely trained to develop psychological understanding through direct, sustained engagement with the phenomena encountered in practice.

As a result, investigative work can remain limited. The process often moves from theory to facts, rather than from facts to theory.

This distance from direct empirical inquiry has important consequences.

Therapists who are not engaged in the development and testing of theory may be less equipped to assess its empirical grounding, coherence, or practical adequacy. They may rely on concepts that cannot easily be revised or abandoned when required.

Yet the field of psychotherapy is characterised by a diversity of competing and sometimes incompatible theories, which makes such critical capacity essential.

For this reason, psychotherapeutic theories should not be treated as fixed systems. Their originators typically conceived them as provisional formulations — open to revision, refinement, and, where necessary, replacement.

Some theoreticians have explicitly warned against their use as doctrines. Carl Rogers, for example, emphasised the need for theoretical flexibility and cautioned against rigid adherence to conceptual frameworks. However, such warnings have not fundamentally altered the dominant model.

Another consequence of a doctrine-driven approach is the restriction of the field of inquiry. When therapists rely exclusively on established theories, they operate within a limited conceptual landscape. Important dimensions of psychological life — such as its collective or historical aspects — may remain insufficiently explored.

My Approach

My way of working differs at this level.

My engagement with psychological phenomena is grounded in direct investigation. The theoretical framework I use has emerged from sustained empirical work — both through research and through clinical practice — and is not derived from the passive application of existing models.

In this sense, facts precede theory. Theory is developed in response to what is observed and remains open to ongoing revision.

This allows for a broader and more flexible engagement with psychological reality, including dimensions that are often neglected within standard frameworks, such as the collective and historical aspects of human psychology.

Existing theories are not dismissed. They are treated as resources — used where they prove relevant and set aside where they do not.

What distinguishes my approach is not the rejection of theory, but the way it is related to: as a tool grounded in experience, rather than as a system to be applied.

The Advantages of a Practitioner–Researcher Approach

My analyses and interpretations are grounded in observation and evidence, rather than speculation or unexamined assumptions
My thinking is critical and evaluative, allowing me to assess the validity of both my own concepts and those of others
Guided by facts rather than disciplinary boundaries, I am not confined to a single theoretical framework but can draw on all relevant sources of knowledge
Theoretical development and therapeutic exploration proceed together, in a coherent and integrated manner
My work is informed by ongoing, up-to-date inquiry rather than reliance on static or outdated models

Benefits for My Clients

Your experience remains the primary point of reference, rather than being filtered through rigid or artificially imposed frameworks
Interventions are grounded, relevant, and open to revision and collaborative exploration
Your needs are more accurately identified
New insights emerge within a shared process of understanding
The work remains closely connected to lived experience, avoiding unnecessary abstraction
The process is genuinely collaborative: you are actively involved in the development of understanding
Over time, you develop the capacity to reflect independently and to take an active role in your own psychological work
The value of the therapeutic process is continuously monitored and can be assessed collaboratively at any stage

Presenting my work

The theoretical framework that has emerged from my long-standing commitment to research and personal development is both extensive and complex, and has developed in a distinctive way.

For this reason, its full articulation requires a dedicated format. The three books I am currently writing aim to present a coherent synthesis of this work.

In the meantime, an indication of its development can be found in my work on the process of socialisation, which marked an important stage in my research between 2000 and 2010.

• Van de Walle, G. (2011). ‘Becoming familiar with a world’: A relational view of socialization. International

Review of Sociology, 21 (2), 315–333.

• Van de Walle, G. (2008). Durkheim and socialization. Durkheimian Studies, 14 (1), 35–58.

My Research Themes

Since 1990, my research has been concerned with the most fundamental questions of human psychological life, including:

• the nature and structure of the self, and the psychological processes through which it develops

• the different stages and forms of human development, from early life through to later stages of existence

• the relationship between the self and the world, including embodiment and processes of socialisation

• the broader structures within which human experience takes place, across different cultures and historical contexts

• the place of the spiritual dimension within human life and its possible significance

• the nature of the therapeutic process in psychotherapy

These themes are not addressed in an abstract way, but through a continuous engagement with experience, both in research and in clinical work.

Dr Guy Van de Walle — Psychotherapist & Psychologist | Chelmsford & Online (EN/FR)

Grounded Investigative Psychotherapy - The Next Standard

Beyond assumption. Toward a more scientific understanding of your experience