Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy as a healing strategy owes its existence to the evolutionary origins of language and human altruism as survival imperatives for the vulnerable Homo mother/infant dyad. This understanding came to me only as I was completing my book, Created in the Image, which was begun as a means of putting before my colleagues my discoveries concerning the value of combining a Humanistic way of working, with dreams and images, with a theoretical foundation based on the Fairbairn/Guntrip object relations theory. This aim was deflected, halfway through the writing, towards elucidating the intra-psychic evidence on human evolution as I have described in the Introduction to the book. However this has not altered my conviction that this is a therapeutic approach that can be of great benefit for schizoid clients. An understanding of the evolutionary origins and significance of both the schizoid condition and the human imaginal world only adds to this. I also think that humanistic psychotherapy would benefit it from reconnecting to its scientific roots.

Way in: -- if you're interested in this methodology I suggest you start with the Case Study Client Jane and perhaps follow that by reading the essay Colin Alive, both have full transcripts of the image work involved. Chapters 3 and 4 together with their transcripts provide quite a full range of examples of the developed method and some of the repeatable findings e.g. the usefulness of the "turn and look in the opposite direction" ploy in the imaginal world. I have the intention of putting more transcripts of work with some of these clients on the website to expand this. We shall see if my health holds up long enough to do this! I also hope to add some more information about my findings from using this methodology under Updates and Critiques with the indicator Psy. The two essays Part Selves I and II explain how I have brought together several theoretical perspectives to work in conjunction with my preferred object relations theory.

Obsessive compulsive thinking: -- I am one who has suffered throughout my life from compulsive internal imaginal worlds. I have worked with two clients with the same condition, and heard a radio news item interviewing two children who experienced it in different ways, one positively one negatively. I have not come across any discussion of working with it in the psychotherapeutic literature, and know that one of my clients experienced a very unhelpful reaction from a psychoanalytic therapist. I think the condition could possibly be classified under the above heading, the thinking being done in the original hominin language of images. If you're interested as a sufferer of the condition, I would suggest Jungian or humanistic psychotherapy. Chapter 1 will give you an insider's experience of the condition and chapter 9 will tell you the sense I have made of it. For practitioners, I would suggest that the internal worlds of the client with this issue need to be treated with the same unconditional positive regard and attention as the client, remembering that each character is a part of the client, and the stories are a way of surviving and "making better" (by providing an acceptable explanation of) the real situation, past or present, that they are talking about in the original Pleistocene language. If the imaginal action becomes pathologically violent or sexual it can be treated in the same way that evidence of a tendency towards such action in the real world would be dealt with. It was not possible, either for my self or my clients, to hold facilitated dialogues with characters from inside the worlds. Interpretation needs to be very sensitive to the powerful relationships between the observing ego of the client and the internal part selves; my client felt she could hardly live without the imaginal children that she mothered and protected in the internal world that was profoundly real for her, even though she knew it was not, and knew they were part selves.

Request It is possible that someone coming to the site from an interest in psychotherapy may think they recognize me, and if so I would ask them to respect my chosen anonymity, which is for the protection of my clients as well as myself.

The essay Wendy's dream, (the only one that had to be rewritten to pass) was written from an existential viewpoint, but as it's one that I don't take unless forced to by course requirements, because it denies the existence of the unconscious, the essay is not recommended, but it may contain a little more information than chapter 3; I can't imagine anyone committed to existential psychotherapy reading this site.

Errors: -- the contents of this site have had to be transferred so many times, from WordStar to a more modern format, again onto the computer, and then onto the website that errors are inevitable; my apologies, I have not the health to proof read everything. They will be most difficult, I imagine, to make sense of in the transcripts, but I have not actually come across any yet, and do not think they will be more significant than the common typos that I find in books these days. I know there are errors in the references because these have prevented the links from being made but again I hope they won't cause too many problems; same goes for the errors introduced into the proper use of italics, to distinguish titles