This unique collection by leading authors explores the links between therapy and the political world, and their contribution to each other. Topics covered include:
Psychotherapy in the political sphere, including the roots of conflict, social trauma, and ecopsychology
Political dimensions of psychotherapy practice, such as discrimination, power, sexuality, and postcolonial issues
Psychotherapy, the state and institutions, including the law and ethics, and psychotherapy in healthcare
Working at the interface, examples of therapy in political action from Croatia, the USA, the UK and Israel/Palestine
How to `place? political issues in therapy is highly controversial ? for example, whether political themes should be interpreted psychologically in the consulting room, or respected as valid in their own right: similar issues arise for the role of therapeutic insights in political reality. This book provides a map through these complex and demanding areas for therapists and counsellors in training, as well as for experienced practitioners or other interested readers.
Contributors: Lane Arye, Arlene Audergon, Emanuel Berman, Sandra Bloom, Jocelyn Chaplin, Petruska Clarkson, Chess Denman, Dawn Freshwater, Kate Gentile, John Lees, Renos Papadopoulos, Hilary Prentice, Mary-Jayne Rust, Judy Ryde, Andrew Samuels, Nick Totton.
Author Biography
Nick Totton originally trained in Reichian therapy in the early 1980s and since then has worked as a psychotherapist and trainer based in Leeds. He has an M.A. in Psychoanalytic Studies from Leeds Metropolitan University, where he used to teach. His other books published by Open University Press include Personality and Character Types (with Michael Jacobs), Body Psychotherapy and New Dimensions in Body Psychotherapy.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Notes on contributors Introduction
Part 1: Psychotherapy in the political sphere
Politics on the couch? Psychotherapy and society - Some possibilities and some limitations
Societal trauma: Democracy in danger
Conflict, competition and aggression
The breast-milk of the inuit mother: A tale of micro and macrocosm, shadow and light
Part 2: Political dimensions of psychotherapy practice
The politics of sexuality, gender and object choice in therapy
Working with difference: The political context of psychotherapy with an intersubjective dialogue
Power in the therapeutic relationship
Part 3: Psychotherapy, the state and institutions Values, ethics and the law: A story with some morals The institutions of psychotherapy
Politics and psychotherapy in the context of healthcare
Part 4: Working at the interface: Psychotherapy in political action Transforming conflict into community: Post-war reconciliation in Croatia Israeli psychotherapists and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict The Bridge Project: Radical psychotherapy for the 21st Century How to create social activism: Turning the passive to active without killing each other
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