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.
The Carving
The Carving
Like most psychotherapists, I work in a room intentionally neutral in its décor and furnishings to allow my clients and their therapeutic relationship with me to be as unencumbered by extraneous intrusion or distraction as is possible. Family photographs and personal memorabilia have no place here, but to distinguish the room from a prison cell or a medical clinic, it does have bookshelves (admittedly housing only psychotherapy books), comfortable sofas, low tables, even a bowl of dried gourds – all of which must give away something of my stylistic tastes and preferences and say something about me, though limited to the confines of the consulting room. Equally, my choice of clothes, shoes, even the boxes of tissues I provide or my appointments diary must evoke some associations for my clients that might usefully ...
