Being a Sport Psychologist

Continuing the theme of identifying and then critically examining key tasks that every sport psychologist undeniably performs, we have the intake process. Technically, without performing some type of ‘intake’, the sport psychologist could not have any clients and would be reduced to simply writing for an unknown audience (i.e., blogs, books, etc.) or perhaps just theorizing in private. Intake really is an unavoidable, and therefore very important, component of the sport psychology process. In order to establish a helping relationship with a client (individual or team), there must be a phase in which a relationship is formed and formal/informal rules are agreed.

While sport and exercise psychologists frequently carry out core tasks of needs analysis (Chapter 5) and delivering interventions (Chapters 8 and 9), there is very little consensus regarding the ways that these key roles are related, with the one informing the other. This chapter (as well as Chapter 7) seeks to help practising psychologists to structure, record, evaluate and reflect upon their decision-making processes. As is the case throughout this book, the core task of case formulation is presented as being carried out by a psychologist whether explicit or not. Even if it has never crossed one’s mind to perform a case formulation, a practising psychologist is doing it anyway. It might be that the psychologist develops unique, detailed and fully operational working models for each client they encounter. Alternatively, it might be that s/he has ‘settled’ (consciously or unconsciously) for one model that explains how all people’s minds work, and so simply slots each client into this model. Indeed, some sport psychologists have been criticized for behaving as though ‘all these techniques work, regardless of which model one uses’ — which in itself is effectively a case formulation decision, just one that chooses to overlook or ignore the underlying mechanisms.

In addition to the core sport psychologist’s roles outlined so far, there are also a number of important over-arching processes. Some of these processes are explicitly required by regulatory bodies, such as accurate record keeping, continued training throughout the career and supervision whilst under training. Others are more implicit requirements (or are only ‘required’ by certain countries’ regulatory bodies). These might include being a reflective practitioner who evaluates their own practice, continuing supervision or mentoring once qualified and supervising other trainee psychologists. At their core, all of these activities can be considered part of a suite of quality assurance processes. First of all, we need to define quality assurance for sport psychology as follows. Overall, quality assurance is the maintenance of a desired level of quality in a service or product, especially by means of attention to every stage of the process of delivery (as suggested by the model in this book). Then we need to apply this concept to sport psychology. As a profession, we want to ensure that a minimum standard of competence is achieved through the training and qualification pathway we offer, but we also want to pursue continual improvement and ‘best practice’. Remember that it is almost impossible to identify one true/right/best way of doing sport psychology, as evidenced in the previous nine chapters.