Description
Book SynopsisThis vital new book examines how healing encounters might further the horizons of practice and extend innovation in professional interpersonal relationships. Highly qualified contributors explore ways in which insights into individual, cultural and community meanings open further perspectives on human being and help clarify what can feel a confusing present and an increasingly unpredictable future.
Divided into parts on Personal and Professional Identity, Culture and Personal Context, Practice Research, and Clinical Practice, each chapter opens up thinking on crucial contemporary issues, informed by personal and clinical practice case-study examples and by findings from leading-edge research investigations, adding to the current literature on both theory and practice.
This book brings together voices from the margins, offering alternative practice perspectives that look beyond protocol and statistics-based therapy, emphasising the relational richness that informs professional interpersonal encounters in the support of mental health and wellbeing. It will be of immense value to counsellors and psychotherapists in training and practice, as well as for related mental health professionals and those with an interest in the caring professions.
Trade Review"This is a book that inspires hope. Its contributors are, in their different ways, motivated by restlessness with a dysfunctional society and with the current state of the caring and therapeutic professions in Britain. From vantage points, often on the margin, they offer profound and pioneering reflections on theory, practice and research. Their combined efforts will encourage readers not to yield to the dispiriting trends which permeate our fractured society or to the straitjackets which increasingly threaten therapeutic creativity. It is refreshing to meet a group of writers who celebrate the whole person and have retained the vision of a more compassionate society." - Emeritus Professor Brian Thorne, University of East Anglia, UK; Lay Canon, Norwich Cathedral
"In an age where the psychological therapies seem increasingly boundary-focused, it is a delight to read a book that allows you to breathe once again. Bringing together formidably articulate writers, Nolan and West facilitate the reader beyond the limitations of therapy and explore aspects of our work in a refreshing and engaging way. They demonstrate that while good helping is about being grounded in strong ethical practice, work that empowers and truly facilitates is informed by much wider horizons. An excellent and welcome read." - Dr Andrew Reeves, Chair of BACP. Associate Professor in the Counselling Professions and Mental Health, University of Chester, UK
"This book takes readers on a refreshing journey of reflection, ‘beyond’ the customary ‘packaged’ mainstream ways of understanding counselling and psychotherapy (which are well-rehearsed and culturally-constrained), to alternative ways of thinking that are born out of the wisdom that comes from experienced practitioner-reflexivity and wider-informed practitioner development. Any therapist, who has grown beyond the bounds of defensive practice to become more grounded and authentic in their way of being and thinking with clients, will find resonances with, and permission-giving in, the text." - Professor Peter M. Gubi, Professor of Counselling, University of Chester, UK
Table of ContentsIntroduction Greg Nolan and William West
Part I: Personal and Professional Identity
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- Reflections beyond Therapy: To Be or to Not-Be, is That the Question?
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Bridget Tardivel
- ‘Magical’ consciousness: An ancient god, synchrony, and anomaly in service of the ego.
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David Smith & Friday Faraday
- The immersion of the mermaid: A heuristic autoethnographic approach to working
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therapeutically with active imagination and traumatic loss. Rachel Mallen
- Self-identity, redefinition and the trans-relational quest for meaningful connection.
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Phil Goss
Part II: Culture and Personal Context
- It’s not all just psychology: Context, social class and counselling. Liz Ballinger
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- Confidence with Difficult Conversations: The need to explore taboo subjects in particular
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relation to the sexual abuse of children. Barry O’Sullivan
- Culture as a resource in the creation of meaning – Part One. George MacDonald
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- Culture as a resource in the creation of meaning – Part Two. George MacDonald
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Part III: Practice Research
- Hope is a rope: Living with a difficult present and an uncertain future. John Prysor-Jones
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- A Chocolate Santa: Imaging the liminal moment with reverie in research. Lynn McVey
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- Moments of deep encounter in listening relationships: Resisting limiting the interpretive frame
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to enhance beneficial encounter. James Tebbutt
Part IV: Clinical Practice
- There is no horizon, this side or that side, of our own shadow: The relational (l)edge in clinical supervision. Greg Nolan
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- A dialogue with three voices: Therapist, interpreter, asylum seeker/refugee.
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Lynn Learman
- Beyond relationships – into new realms. Allison Brown
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- Client wisdom and holism in anthroposophic psychotherapy. John Lees
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- Dwelling on the edge. William West
In Conclusion. William West & Greg Nolan
