Psychotherapy In Everyday Life

In this book, Dreier shows how clients make therapy work in their everyday lives. Therapy cannot fulfill its purpose until the clients can make it work outside the therapy room in relation to the concerns, people, and places of their everyday lives. Research on therapy has largely ignored these efforts. Based on session transcripts and interviews with a family of four about their everyday lives, Dreier shows the extensive and varied work the clients do to make their therapy work across places. Processes of change and learning are seen in a new perspective and it is shown that expert practices depend on how persons conduct their everyday lives. To grasp this, Dreier developed a theory of persons that is based on how they conduct their lives in social practice. This theory is grounded in critical psychology and social practice theory and is also relevant for understanding other expert practices such as education.

The place of the psychotherapist within the hierarchy of the medical profession and his status in the public opinion are ambiguous: many myths and ill-informed fears cloud the practice of psychotherapy--not the least of which is the thorny issue of doctor-patient relationships. In this finely etched book, Peter Lomas puts the case for a personal psychotherapeutic approach based on his work with patients over many years. "The Psychotherapy of Everyday Life "argues that the response to a person who comes for help should be an intuitive one, not hidebound by confusing technical theory. Psychotherapy is best understood as the application of ordinary interpersonal competence within an unusual setting, and formulations about its nature should take this point into account as their starting point. In his brilliant new introduction, the author juxtaposes the clinical neutrality of Sigmund Freud to the Saridor Ferenczi position, which entails a sense of the rights of and respect for the patient. Lomas holds that Freud initiated the setting but brought to bear upon it an unnecessary and inappropriate theoretical superstructure that now stands between therapist and patient. It is not ideology but everyday judgment that should be the touchstone of treatment. Rigid professional distance can blind the analyst to the actual needs of real people.

Touch has been a taboo in mainstream Western talking therapies since their inception. This book examines the effects on us of touch, and of touch deprivation – what we feel when we are touched, what it means to us, and the fact that some individuals and cultures are more tactile than others. The author traces the development and perpetuation of the touch taboo, puts forward counterarguments to it, outlines criteria for the safe and effective use of touch in therapy, and suggests ways of dismantling the touch taboo should we wish to do so. Through moving interviews with clients who have experienced life-changing benefits of physical contact at the hands of their therapists, the place of touch in therapy practice is re-evaluated and the therapy profession urged to re-examine its attitudes towards this important therapeutic tool. This book will be essential reading for therapists, counsellors, social workers, educators, health professionals and for any general reader interested in the crucial issue of touch in everyday life.

This book helps the patient of psychotherapeutic intervention to stay with the therapy beyond both the initial satisfactions and the initial frustrations that the process entails. It serves as a guide for patients of psychoanalytic or psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Most of us find ourselves listening to other people's problems at some time or another - either our friends' or, in the course of our work, patients, pupils, clients, colleagues. This book, written clearly in user friendly language, takes the reader step by step through a range of skills to help them become a better listener, communicator and helper in their everyday lives, progressing from inviting the person to talk to ending a helping conversation. Using plenty of examples, tips, exercises and sample conversations, the authors show how the skills described can be easily learned and can fit comfortably into everyday life. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in improving their communication and helping skills as well as those students taking introductory courses in counselling and counselling skills. Katheryn Geldard is a Child and Family Therapist and a visiting lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. David Geldard is a Counselling Psychologist. Together they are the authors of several books on counselling. They jointly manage a counselling practice where they specialise in working with children, adolescents, and their families. They also run training programmes for helping professionals who wish to enhance their counselling skills.

In this book, Dreier shows how clients make therapy work in their everyday lives. Therapy cannot fulfill its purpose until the clients can make it work outside the therapy room in relation to the concerns, people, and places of their everyday lives. Research on therapy has largely ignored these efforts. Based on session transcripts and interviews with a family of four about their everyday lives, Dreier shows the extensive and varied work the clients do to make their therapy work across places. Processes of change and learning are seen in a new perspective and it is shown that expert practices depend on how persons conduct their everyday lives. To grasp this, Dreier developed a theory of persons that is based on how they conduct their lives in social practice. This theory is grounded in critical psychology and social practice theory and is also relevant for understanding other expert practices such as education.

The place of the psychotherapist within the hierarchy of the medical profession and his status in the public opinion are ambiguous: many myths and ill-informed fears cloud the practice of psychotherapy not the least of which is the thorny issue of doctor-patient relationships. In this finely etched book, Peter Lomas puts the case for a personal psychotherapeutic approach based on his work with patients over many years. The Psychotherapy of Everyday Life argues that the response to a person who comes for help should be an intuitive one, not hidebound by confusing technical theory. Psychotherapy is best understood as the application of ordinary interpersonal competence within an unusual setting, and formulations about its nature should take this point into account as their starting point. In his brilliant new introduction, the author juxtaposes the clinical neutrality of Sigmund Freud to the Saridor Ferenczi position, which entails a sense of the rights of and respect for the patient. Lomas holds that Freud initiated the setting but brought to bear upon it an unnecessary and inappropriate theoretical superstructure that now stands between therapist and patient. It is not ideology but everyday judgment that should be the touchstone of treatment. Rigid professional distance can blind the analyst to the actual needs of real people.

Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind's own development. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds' own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us. Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a tool for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. Guided by the Buddha's life as a profound example of the power of trauma, Epstein's also closely examines his own experience and that of his psychiatric patients to help us all understand that the way out of pain is through it.