Brian Lennon has worked both as a guidance counsellor and as a psychologist over a period of twenty-five years. At one stage in 2004 he realised that a long-standing interest in the development of responsibility in young people moved to a different level. This arose from his discovery that many teenagers who had left education early seemed to have this common characteristic which he interpreted as a difficulty with abstraction.
In 1985 Brian had studied Reality Therapy with its creator, Dr. William Glasser, later becoming a faculty member and has been heavily involved in this work ever since. Reality Therapy focuses very much on the fact that people control their own lives and so its general approach is to appeal to the client’s sense of responsibility. Working with teenagers, Brian found that some appeared to have a very weak sense of responsibility, something that presented a challenge in counselling them.
In 2004 he came to realise that this condition had a much broader impact on a person’s life. He now defined abstraction as the cognitive ability to perceive beyond immediate experience. Conversely, the lack of this ability needed a name and he created the term “dystraxia” to describe it. He found that adults who worked with young people were quick to grasp the concept and could see this condition in many of their young charges.
Brian has published several career guidance text books and a range of career guidance software including QualifaX which he created around 1985. He also published a booklet about anger management and, in 2019, two books about Reality Therapy and Choice Theory psychology. He has given presentations mostly about Reality Therapy and Choice Theory in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, England, Ireland, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain and the USA.
He is a Fellow of the Irish Institute of Guidance Counsellors, a Fellow of the William Glasser Institute Ireland and is Chair Emeritus of William Glasser International.
Brian was born in Co. Down and now lives with his wife Laura in Co. Dublin, Ireland.
For ideas and materials relating to Brian’s interests, CLICK HERE.