Therapy Beyond Modernity

This book draws together radical critiques of therapy and shows how therapists have become too willing administrators of the mind, and how they then delight in the bureaucratic management of therapeutic practice.

In Beyond Modernity, Father Rutler shows the emptiness and vanity of modern man's attempts to deify progress and look at modernity as a goal in itself. Written in a style reminiscent of Chesterton, this book is a theological and sociological commentary on the bankruptcy of progressivism. "The modern age is becoming outmoded, the thing it thought most unlikely. This poses a problem overwhelming to set minds: what happens when the age which was supposed to be the end of all the ages ends itself? The stark reply is, modern man is the least equipped to know. While posturing as the breath of things to come, he was insinuating the first civilized denial of the future. Modernity is worse than a rejection of the past; it is a defiant avoidance of that which is next, probably the first school of discourse to cancel tomorrow as a thing as vapid as part of yesterday." — George W. Rutler, from the Foreword

Therapy & the Counter-tradition: The Edge of Philosophy brings together leading exponents of contemporary psychotherapy, philosophers and writers, to explore how philosophical ideas may inform therapy work. Each author discusses a particular philosopher who has influenced their life and therapeutic practice, while questioning how counselling and psychotherapy can address human ‘wholeness’, despite the ascendancy of rationality, regulation and diagnosis. It also seeks to acknowledge the distinct lack of philosophical input and education in counselling and psychotherapy training. The chapters are rooted in the Counter-Tradition, whose diverse manifestations include humanism, skepticism, fideism, as well as the opening of philosophy and psychology to poetry and the arts. This collection of thought-provoking essays will help open the discussion within the psychological therapies, by providing therapists with critical philosophical references, which will help broaden their knowledge and the scope of their practice. Therapy & the Counter-tradition: The Edge of Philosophy will be of interest to mental health professionals, practitioners, counselling and psychotherapy trainees and trainers, and academics tutoring or studying psychology. It will also appeal to those interested in psychology, meditation, personal development and philosophy.

Offering a much-needed update of Rogerian theory and practice, and based on insights from cultural studies and ecopsychology, this book breaks new ground by questioning the relevance of certain ways of thinking about counselling and psychotherapy not least in the current planetary emergency. In response to the growing need for therapists to address increasing anxieties about the climate crisis, Bernie Neville and Keith Tudor address the issue in terms that help therapists reflect on their practice. Based on the authors’ previous publications and incorporating new material, this book presents and explores ideas that have been largely neglected in person-centred literature. It re-visions person-centred psychology (PCP) from what has become predominantly its application to individuals to a broader perspective on and about life and the living world. Further, it takes a philosophical and cultural perspective to re-present and re-vision PCP as a 'we' psychology, an eco-psychology, and an eco-therapy. This book will be of interest to those working in the fields of person-centred therapy, ecopsychology, and ecotherapy as well as those involved in the education, training, and supervision of counsellors and psychotherapists.

For Emmanuel Levinas the danger of Western thought is that, if we start with ourselves, we end with ourselves. Psychotherapy and counselling would be for the sole purpose of strengthening self-initiated and self-directed fulfilment, resulting in individual and societal forms of totalitarianism. Levinas suggests that ethics should be about putting the Other first, but not in some fundamentalist Christian sense of the self-choosing to give one’s life for others. The origin of authentic ethical behaviour is not from the self but from the Other. Levinas offers us a fundamental shift in our thinking about therapeutic practices. His writings call on us to have an ethical responsibility in the very way we practice therapy. This is with all the complexities of negotiating from nearness and distance, involvement and boundaries, and how we view ourselves in attempting to do this. Levinas inspires us towards ontological, epistemological and methodological shifts. The attempt to put the Other first can significantly change our notion of being. It can help us be taken away from the dangers of a therapy based on ego psychology, which seems to permeate so much of our therapies whether classified as humanistic, psychoanalytic, behavioural or existential. All except the Introduction and two of the chapters were originally published in the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling.

The person-centred approach is one of the most popular, enduring and respected approaches to psychotherapy and counselling. Person-Centred Therapy returns to its original formulations to define it as radically different from other self-oriented therapies. Keith Tudor and Mike Worrall draw on a wealth of experience as practitioners, a deep knowledge of the approach and its history, and a broad and inclusive awareness of other approaches. This significant contribution to the advancement of person-centred therapy: Examines the roots of person-centred thinking in existential, phenomenological and organismic philosophy. Locates the approach in the context of other approaches to psychotherapy and counselling. Shows how recent research in areas such as neuroscience support the philosophical premises of person-centred therapy. Challenges person-centred therapists to examine their practice in the light of the history and philosophical principles of the approach. Person-Centred Therapy offers new and exciting perspectives on the process and practice of therapy, and will encourage person-centred practitioners to think about their work in deeper and more sophisticated ways.

Re-Visioning Existential Therapy is a collection of essays from leading practitioners and theorists around the globe which questions some of the key tenets of traditional existential therapy. The book enlightens, stimulates, and provokes the reader out of complacency. It expands the breadth and scope of the approach, discusses recent developments in psychotherapy and philosophy, and aligns existential therapy to a progressive, radical, and counter-traditional ethos. Through clinical studies, personal reflections, discussions on aspects of theory, and exciting links to art, literature, and contemporary culture, these very diverse and wide-ranging contributions take existential therapy into the fertile wilderness of shared experience. Through renewed links to seminal writers, it captures the subversive spirit, the deep compassion, the unflinching gaze and playfulness that is at the heart of the approach. The book will share knowledge and enthusiasm for the practice of existential therapy in order to encourage therapists and trainees to partake of the joys and challenges of existential practice.

Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation Toward the Other in Community Mental Health Care offers a rare and intimate portrayal of the moral process of a mental health clinician that interrogates the intractable problem of systemic dehumanisation in community mental health care and looks to the notion of "wonder" and the visionary relational ethics of Emmanuel Levinas for a possible cure. An interdisciplinary study with transdisciplinary aspirations, this book contributes an original and compelling voice to the emerging therapeutic conversation attempting to re-imagine and transcend the objectifying constraints of the dominant discourse and the reductive world view that drives it. Chapters bring into dialogue the fields of community mental health care, psychology, psychology and the Other, the philosophy of wonder, Levinasian ethics, clinical ethics, the moral research of autoethnography and the medical humanities, to consider the defilement of the vulnerable help seeker, the moral injury of the clinician and look for answers beyond. This book is an ethical primer for mental health professionals, researchers, educators, advocates and service users working to re-imagine and heal a broken system by challenging the underpinnings of entrenched dehumanisation and standing with those they "serve".