ABSTRACT

This 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.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part I|2 pages

Personal and professional identity

chapter 1|11 pages

Reflections Beyond Therapy

To be or to not-be, is that the question?

chapter 2|12 pages

‘Magical’ Consciousness

An ancient god, synchrony and anomaly in service of the ego

chapter 3|18 pages

The Immersion of the Mermaid

A heuristic autoethnographic approach to working therapeutically with active imagination and traumatic loss

part II|2 pages

Culture and personal context

chapter 5|13 pages

Context, Social Class and Counselling

It’s not all just psychology

chapter 6|14 pages

Confidence with Difficult Conversations

The need to explore taboo subjects in particular relation to the sexual abuse of children

part III|2 pages

Practice research

chapter 9|11 pages

Hope is a Rope

Living with a difficult present and an uncertain future

chapter 10|12 pages

A Chocolate Santa

Imaging the liminal moment with reverie in research

chapter 11|16 pages

Moments of Deep Encounter in Listening Relationships

Resisting limiting the interpretive frame to enhance beneficial encounter

part IV|2 pages

Clinical practice

chapter 12|17 pages

There is no horizon, this side or that side, of our own shadow

Risking the relational (l)edge in clinical supervision

chapter 13|15 pages

A Dialogue with Three Voices

Creating a therapeutic triad between therapist, asylum seeker and interpreter

chapter 14|12 pages

Beyond Relationships

Into new realms in supervision

chapter 16|8 pages

Dwelling on the Edge

chapter |3 pages

In Conclusion