Writing for the book draft has slowed. What started pre-retreat as a sense of edginess transmuted post-retreat into a conscious decision to step back from the keyboard. The edginess was a tectonic plate-like meeting of my drive to finish and my need to break this summer. Speaking with Rinpoche on retreat brought the “high lung” …
Back from retreat, and spending my days settling back into “reality”. I haven’t found the transition as steep this time around. Maybe a testament to practice pervading more deeply into life and less “this” (normality) versus “that” (the container of retreat)? I certainly feel a little more practiced in the shift between worlds: a developing …
I’ve just returned home from a two-day, walking adventure: hiking over to Alfriston, and making the return to Lewes the next day. It’s a replication of a trip my wife and I did two months ago. As a comparison of the blog header image reveals, we are transitioning into another phase of summer: and I …
This week I have been queuing up ideas around how my approach to therapy might fit with a description of bio-psycho-social-spiritual; building on the ideas of Engel (1977) who first proposed the “biological, psychological, and social, must be taken into account in every health care task”. A philosophy of clinical care (a way of understanding …
I’m a little under halfway with the project of short essays that will form Part 3 of my book on humanistic psychotherapy. The next collection is entitled “with a little help from our friends”, and will consider how the humanistic practitioner might benefit from engaging with ideas from other therapeutic modalities. As a tutor on …
One of the stickiest traps (and frustrations) for the early career therapist is to find themselves in the realm of a client’s aboutism. What starts as the intention to “really hear and witness a client’s story” becomes a week after week reoccurrence, and soon lands us in impasse…going nowhere; if anything, solidifying what is an …
Another enjoyable week devoting much of my time to writing. I am progressing well with the essays that will form part 3 of my book Humanistic psychotherapy: experiencing second order change. This week I want to share an essay focusing on the dialectic of empathy and challenge; one we might summarise through the sentiment of not …
Back in 2023 I had a brief back and forth exchange with Gestaltist, Ruella Frank. I had approached her with a question that had come up in a peer supervision / study session with a colleague: a curiosity about Frank’s use of the word transubjective to describe the relational quality between therapist and client. Along …
Yesterday was our teaching team’s annual “away day”. Impacted by the retirement of one of our senior faculty and the changes in the curriculum this would be necessitated, this year’s theme was coming back to the philosophical underpinnings of our psychodynamic and humanistic courses. I was delighted to have this opportunity to discuss the very …
This week I share the fourth essay of my intended 64 for my coming book…progress, but a long way to go! This one on “the courage to be” follows on from themes such as “knowing” and “the gift of presence”. I won’t be publishing all the essays, but I hope sharing a few over the …