1st Edition

The Therapeutic Imagination Using literature to deepen psychodynamic understanding and enhance empathy

By Jeremy Holmes Copyright 2014
214 Pages
by Routledge

214 Pages
by Routledge

214 Pages
by Routledge

Use of the imagination is a key aspect of successful psychotherapeutic treatments. Psychotherapy helps clients get in touch with, awaken, and learn to trust their creative inner life, while therapists use their imaginations to mentalise the suffering other and to trace the unconscious stirrings evoked by the intimacy of the consulting room. Working from this premise, in The Therapeutic... Read more

The Poetics of Psychotherapy. Psychotherapy and Narrative. Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Psychiatric Diagnoses. ‘Only Connect’: Psychotherapy and Psychiatry.

Biography

Jeremy Holmes worked for 35 years as a Consultant Psychiatrist and Medical Psychotherapist in the NHS. He is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter, UK, and lectures nationally and internationally. Recent publications include The Oxford Textbook of Psychotherapy, Storr’s The Art of Psychotherapy and Exploring in Security: Towards an Attachment-Informed Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

'This book is like a very rich meal, full of delightful insights to which I will return to sample in smaller portions. It will be of particular relevance to those working in psychoanalytic and psychiatric settings but would also be of interest to therapists of all modalities who value literature.' - Linda Watkinson for Therapy Today

‘Once again, Jeremy Holmes dazzles. Part master class in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and part psychological journey through classics of English literature, this tour de force is a scholarly, integrative and deeply original look at the links between psychotherapy and the imagination. Moving deftly between fiction and the consulting room, Holmes brings alive the literary, artistic and creative processes that make for truly helpful and transforming psychotherapy. A wonderful read.’ – Arietta Slade, Clinical Professor, Yale Child Study Center, USA

‘Jeremy Holmes's The Therapeutic Imagination succeeds in rethinking the assumptions of one discipline from the standpoint of another, without compromising the integrity of either one. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the relationship between literature and the life we all live.’ - Neil Vickers, Reader in English Literature and the Medical Humanities, King's College London, UK

'I found this book immensely rich and absorbing. Holmes argues that literate therapists make better therapists. However, while those who have found their journey to becoming a therapist nurtured through sharing the creative inner worlds of the printed page may find it more useful, it should be of interest to all of us who wish to 'only connect'.' - Wendy Lejeune MBACP, integrative counsellor and psychotherpist, reviewing in Private Practice