ABSTRACT
The requirement in many psychotherapy trainings that the would-be psychotherapist undertake personal therapy for himself is to assist him in reaching a knowledge of his true self and also to assist him emotionally to do so. The development of a person's emotional capacities is clearly central to any psychotherapy training, and without it all intellectual striving to master concepts becomes a hollow endeavour. The course would clearly include detailed study of infant development starting in utero and then birth and all the developmental stages through latency, adolescence, and the different periods of adulthood through to old age and death. If it is true that in psychosis there is a recapitulation of pre-human stages of instinctual development, then the course would need to include zoology taken from an evolutionary perspective. Many of the most creative minds have had to break free of the stranglehold of the official academies of which they were members.
