Summary
Contents
In Tales from the Therapy Room, the author provides ten fictional short stories that give students of counseling and psychotherapy a unique insight into what actually goes on in therapy. Exploring aspects of the client-therapist relationship, the reader is given a fly-on-the-wall view of the therapeutic process. Rather than suggesting a ‘correct’ approach, they explore possibilities and provide entertaining, vivid and thought-provoking descriptions of the therapeutic journey. Issues explored include
contracting; boundaries and confrontation; self-disclosure on the part of the therapist; dream interpretation; the influence of the consulting room environment; conflicting belief systems.
These are much more than just engaging stories — Phil Lapworth draws on over 25 years of clinical experience to show how the student can integrate theory into real practice with real clients. The final chapter explicitly highlights the specific theories, models and issues that are illustrated throughout and provides questions, learning objectives, exercises and Further Reading to encourage critical thinking.
A door into the often-hidden perspective of what a therapist might think and feel within the therapy session, this ‘shrink-wrapped’ resource will be treasured by counseling and psychotherapy trainees and practitioners for years to come.
First Nature
First Nature
There's a line in a song from My Fair Lady in which Professor Henry Higgins admits he's become accustomed to the presence of Eliza Dolittle to such an extent that he says ‘her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs are second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in’. In the context of the song, it's a delightful sentiment. But it seems a strange simile to have chosen: surely breathing is a first nature necessity rather than a second nature habit. But I guess ‘second nature’ is used here as we commonly tend to use it to mean that something seems natural to us – despite the fact that we're really describing the opposite: an adaptation that's so successful it seems it's the reality (our first nature having become ...
