ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an interview of Peter Lomas, who was trained in medicine at Manchester, became senior house surgeon at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and was a general practitioner for six years. For the past twenty-five years Peter’s main work has been as a psychotherapist in private practice. He is particularly interested in the nature of the psychotherapeutic relationship and has published two books on this subject: True and False Experience and The Case for a Personal Psychotherapy. His criticisms of the current technical approach towards emotional problems have led him to seek an alternative to the traditional training institutions. Peter’s aim is to understand the factors which stand in the way of an open and equal relationship between therapist and client and most of his writings focus on this question. He believes that professionals take for granted an unjustifiable superiority in conceiving what takes place between the two participants and explores some of these issues in the interview.
