1st Edition

Extending Horizons in Helping and Caring Therapies Beyond the Liminal in the Healing Encounter

Edited By Greg Nolan, William West Copyright 2020
    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    This vital new book examines how healing encounters might further the horizons of practice and extend innovation in professional interpersonal relationships. Highly qualified contributors explore ways in which insights into individual, cultural and community meanings open further perspectives on human being and help clarify what can feel a confusing present and an increasingly unpredictable future.

    Divided into parts on Personal and Professional Identity, Culture and Personal Context, Practice Research, and Clinical Practice, each chapter opens up thinking on crucial contemporary issues, informed by personal and clinical practice case-study examples and by findings from leading-edge research investigations, adding to the current literature on both theory and practice.

    This book brings together voices from the margins, offering alternative practice perspectives that look beyond protocol and statistics-based therapy, emphasising the relational richness that informs professional interpersonal encounters in the support of mental health and wellbeing. It will be of immense value to counsellors and psychotherapists in training and practice, as well as for related mental health professionals and those with an interest in the caring professions.

    Introduction Greg Nolan and William West

    Part I: Personal and Professional Identity

    1. Reflections beyond Therapy: To Be or to Not-Be, is That the Question?
    2. Bridget Tardivel

    3. ‘Magical’ consciousness: An ancient god, synchrony, and anomaly in service of the ego.
    4. David Smith & Friday Faraday

    5. The immersion of the mermaid: A heuristic autoethnographic approach to working
    6. therapeutically with active imagination and traumatic loss. Rachel Mallen

    7. Self-identity, redefinition and the trans-relational quest for meaningful connection.
    8. Phil Goss

      Part II: Culture and Personal Context

    9. It’s not all just psychology: Context, social class and counselling. Liz Ballinger
    10. Confidence with Difficult Conversations: The need to explore taboo subjects in particular
    11. relation to the sexual abuse of children. Barry O’Sullivan

    12. Culture as a resource in the creation of meaning – Part One. George MacDonald
    13. Culture as a resource in the creation of meaning – Part Two. George MacDonald
    14. Part III: Practice Research

    15. Hope is a rope: Living with a difficult present and an uncertain future. John Prysor-Jones
    16. A Chocolate Santa: Imaging the liminal moment with reverie in research. Lynn McVey
    17. Moments of deep encounter in listening relationships: Resisting limiting the interpretive frame
    18. to enhance beneficial encounter. James Tebbutt

      Part IV: Clinical Practice

    19. There is no horizon, this side or that side, of our own shadow: The relational (l)edge in clinical supervision. Greg Nolan
    20. A dialogue with three voices: Therapist, interpreter, asylum seeker/refugee.
    21. Lynn Learman

    22. Beyond relationships – into new realms. Allison Brown
    23. Client wisdom and holism in anthroposophic psychotherapy. John Lees
    24. Dwelling on the edge. William West

    In Conclusion. William West & Greg Nolan

    Biography

    Greg Nolan is Visiting Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Leeds, MBACP Senior Registered Practitioner and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has a teaching career spanning over 45 years and has research interests in the phenomena of micro-moments in practice and clinical supervision. He has published on therapeutic practice, clinical supervision and counsellor training.

    William West is a Visiting Professor to the University of Chester and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Counselling Studies at the University of Manchester, where he was most noted for his interest in counselling and spirituality and for his work with doctorate and PhD students. He has published extensively and remains passionately interested in the overlap between counselling and religious pastoral care.

    "This is a book that inspires hope. Its contributors are, in their different ways, motivated by restlessness with a dysfunctional society and with the current state of the caring and therapeutic professions in Britain. From vantage points, often on the margin, they offer profound and pioneering reflections on theory, practice and research. Their combined efforts will encourage readers not to yield to the dispiriting trends which permeate our fractured society or to the straitjackets which increasingly threaten therapeutic creativity. It is refreshing to meet a group of writers who celebrate the whole person and have retained the vision of a more compassionate society." - Emeritus Professor Brian Thorne, University of East Anglia, UK; Lay Canon, Norwich Cathedral

    "In an age where the psychological therapies seem increasingly boundary-focused, it is a delight to read a book that allows you to breathe once again. Bringing together formidably articulate writers, Nolan and West facilitate the reader beyond the limitations of therapy and explore aspects of our work in a refreshing and engaging way. They demonstrate that while good helping is about being grounded in strong ethical practice, work that empowers and truly facilitates is informed by much wider horizons. An excellent and welcome read." - Dr Andrew Reeves, Chair of BACP. Associate Professor in the Counselling Professions and Mental Health, University of Chester, UK

    "This book takes readers on a refreshing journey of reflection, ‘beyond’ the customary ‘packaged’ mainstream ways of understanding counselling and psychotherapy (which are well-rehearsed and culturally-constrained), to alternative ways of thinking that are born out of the wisdom that comes from experienced practitioner-reflexivity and wider-informed practitioner development. Any therapist, who has grown beyond the bounds of defensive practice to become more grounded and authentic in their way of being and thinking with clients, will find resonances with, and permission-giving in, the text." - Professor Peter M. Gubi, Professor of Counselling, University of Chester, UK