Beyond Psychotherapy

In Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst, Barnaby B. Barratt illuminates a new perspective on what it means to open our awareness to the depths of psychic life and restores the radicality of genuinely psychoanalytic discourse as the unique science of healing. Starting with an incisive critique of the ideological conformism of psychotherapy, Barratt defines the method of psychoanalysis against the conventional definition, which emphasizes the practice of arriving at useful interpretations about our personal existence. Instead, he shows how a negatively dialectical and deconstructive praxis successfully ‘attacks’ the self-enclosures of interpretation, allowing the speaking-listening subject to become existentially and spiritually open to hidden dimensions of our lived-experience. He also demonstrates how the erotic deathfulness of our being-in-the-world is the ultimate source of all the many resistances to genuinely psychoanalytic praxis, and the reason Freud’s discipline has so frequently been reduced to various models of psychotherapeutic treatment. Focusing on the free-associative dimension of psychoanalysis, Barratt both explores what psychoanalytic processes can achieve that psychotherapeutic ones cannot, and considers the sociopolitical implications of the radical psychoanalytic ‘take’ on the human condition. The book also offers a detailed and compassionate pointer for those wanting to train as psychoanalysts, guiding them away from what Barratt calls the ‘trade-school mentality’ pervading most training institutes today. Groundbreaking and inspiring, Beyond Psychotherapy will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and all other therapists seeking a radically innovative approach. It will also be a valuable text for scholars and students of psychoanalytic studies, social sciences, philosophy and the history of ideas.

Let's get real! Many people will never go to therapy. In addition, many people who go to therapy will make little or no progress largely because of the inability of the therapist. It is a monumental task to explore someone's psyche or to reconstruct human psychological functioning. When it comes to psychotherapy, we continue to fool ourselves and waste precious time. We need to tap into our own inner resources and use common sense to improve our lives. Be your own healer! Take responsibility for your life. Strive towards personal improvement. Rely on your own inner strength.You can hange yourself. Dr. Bacchus, in his book, Beyond Psychotherapy, provides 123 life changing ideas that will help you on your journey through life. You have much more ability within you than you realize. You can heal yourself. You can have a great life!

Solution-focused therapy is often misunderstood to be no more than the techniques it is famous for—pragmatic, future-oriented questions that encourage clients to reconceptualize their problems and build on their strengths. Yet when applied in a "one-size-fits-all" manner, these techniques may produce disappointing results and leave clinicians wondering where they have gone wrong. This volume adds a vital dimension to the SFT literature, providing a rich theoretical framework to facilitate nonformulaic clinical decision making. The focus is on how attention to emotional issues, traditionally not emphasized in brief, strengths-based interventions, can help "unstick" difficult situations and pave the way to successful solutions.

In Beyond Therapy, Erving Polster examines the role of "life focus" in three of society's most familiar activities: ordinary conversation, the arts, and religion. He shows the life focus movement to be an indivisible complement to just simply living. In proposing a paradigm shift from psychotherapy's priority for changing people's troubled lives into the complementary purpose of illuminating their lives, the author invites the participation of many people who do not seek remedial treatment for emotional or psychological problems. Polster incorporates a broader scenario for enhancing attention through community groups, showing that the convergence of people's minds on commonly important life themes creates enlightenment. This interlocked focus amplifies the ensuing conversational content and creates a meditation-like absorption. This kind of pointed focus, argues Polster, has the power to colour the lives of the participants. This work offers rationale and design for life focus community groups, and also creates a heightened identity for the life focus movement, providing other foundational ideas that help to unify diverse approaches. Mental health professionals will benefit from its wealth of specific exercises and instructions for program design. Polster provides leaders and group members with a well-rounded perspective on the basics of personal enlightenment and communal belonging.

Only by the method of free-association could Sigmund Freud have demonstrated how human consciousness is formed by the repression of thoughts and feelings that we consider dangerous. Yet today most therapists ignore this truth about our psychic life. This book offers a critique of the many brands of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that have forgotten Freud's revolutionary discovery. Barnaby B. Barratt offers a fresh and compelling vision of the structure and function of the human psyche, building on the pioneering work of theorists such as André Green and Jean Laplanche, as well as contemporary deconstruction, feminism, and liberation philosophy. He explores how ‘drive’ or desire operates dynamically between our biological body and our mental representations of ourselves, of others, and of the world we inhabit. This dynamic vision not only demonstrates how the only authentic freedom from our internal imprisonments comes through free-associative praxis, it also shows the extent to which other models of psychoanalysis (such as ego-psychology, object-relations, self-psychology and interpersonal-relations) tend to stray disastrously from Freud's original and revolutionary insights. This is a vision that understands the central issues that imprison our psychic lives - the way in which the reflections of consciousness are based on the repression of our innermost desires, the way in which our erotic vitality is so often repudiated, and the way in which our socialization oppressively stifles our human spirit. Radical Psychoanalysis restores to the discipline of psychoanalysis the revolutionary impetus that has so often been lost. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, mental health practitioners and students and academics with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. dimensions of human nourishment 2. the levels of human nourishment 3. model for helping 4. apparency in search of a person: The unique contributions of the client centered approach 5. man for each other: unique contributions of the existential approach 6. the illusive suicide: The unique contributions of the psychoanalytic approach 7. chance, not choice or change: the unique contributions of the trait and factor counseling approach 8. to act or not to act: The unique contributions of behavior modification approaches 9. beyond the known: The phases of helping 10. crisis therapy: The crossroads for client and therapist 11. in search of an honest experience; Confrontation in cousneling and life 12. differential treatment: other sources of gain in help 13. cousneling as a way of life 14. Training as a way of life 15. a statement of training values 16. beyond counseling and therapy.

Therapy and Beyond: Counselling Psychology Contributions to Therapeutic and Social Issues presents an overview of the origins, current practices, and potential future of the discipline of counselling psychology. Presents an up-to-date review of the knowledge base behind the discipline of counselling psychology that addresses the notion of human wellbeing and critiques the concept of ‘psychopathology’ Includes an assessment of the contributions that counselling psychology makes to understanding people as individuals, in their working lives, and in wider social domains Offers an overview of counselling psychology's contributions beyond the consulting room, including practices in the domain of spirituality, the arts and creative media, and the environmental movement Critiques contemporary challenges facing research as well as the role that research methods have in responding to questions about humanity and individual experience

Using mindfulness-based techniques and cognitive behavioral tools, a leading expert on the use of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) teaches readers to transcend the experience of chronic pain by reconnecting with other, more valued aspects of their lives.