ABSTRACT
What gives a person the sense of being well and ‘together’? How does a person become strong, in the sense of having good selfesteem, a good ability to understand situations and use them creatively, a good personality-organization which allows feelings and needs to find expression in actions and in gratifications which in turn feed self-esteem? Bluntly, we do not know for sure. We may have some guesses based on what good parents, good friends, and good therapists have in common. It has been interesting to note, at various points in this book, what different authors thought to be parallels between the behaviour of good parents and good therapists. The present chapter looks specifically at these parallels and their implications. (I shall use the word ‘psychotherapist’ – ‘therapist’ for short – for all professionals who work in the psychoanalytic tradition. Though they may be called psycho-analysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists, or whatever, it is the way they think and behave that we are concerned with.)
Literally, psychotherapy means ‘ministering to a person’s breath, soul, life’. (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary does not have the word in its main text; I have used the references to ‘therapy’ and to
‘psyche’.) Parents do this, and psychotherapists do this, but they are not the only ones. Friends and lovers are also notable in this respect.
