ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the work of a Central London voluntary sector organisation treating addicts holistically from 1985 to 2014 using the psychoanalytic ideas of Jung, James Hillman, and Donald Winnicott; the process philosophy of A.N. Whitehead and David Bohm and group analytic and complementary healthcare models.
Jason Wright describes the internal and external processes of containment necessary to work with the experiences of a diverse therapeutic community. The model for the practice was one of community articulated through Hillman’s archetypal framework. Of importance were the ‘holding’ and ‘object’ concepts of Winnicott and the ‘large group’ concepts of Patrick De Mare.
This psychotherapeutic frame was in negotiation with other traditions particularly acupuncture, Qi Gong, and Chinese herbalism form ‘the East’ and herbal medicine, homeopathy, and physical treatments such as Alexander technique and Cranio-Sacral therapy from ‘the West’. Together, these treatments formed a physical, mental, and spiritual frame. Whitehead’s and Bohm’s ideas of process became a useful tool for describing the relational dynamics of people, philosophies and practices. This complexity is developed in the context of internal and external communities as well as communities of ideas and philosophies and Wright discusses this dynamic view of the whole as an interactive reflexive and emergent model.
