Cradling the Chrysalis

This book addresses the ethical and philosophical basis for the teaching/learning involved in becoming a psychotherapist. How can training prepare prospective psychotherapists, counsellors, and counselling psychologists for a task whose practitioners cannot even agree as to whether it is an art or a science, an impersonal clinical interaction or a profoundly humane, even 'spiritual' encounter?The authors believe they share with their students a passion about the possibilities inherent in this particular kind of conversation. Such a meeting demands a fully personal engagement and a profoundly ethical attitude towards the relationship with the Other; it is also potentially an important beginning in 'repairing the world'. The book explores the relative importance and emphasis of the structure, content and process of psychotherapy training. Its thesis is that the teaching/learning takes place in the quality of the reciprocal meeting between the teacher and the learner. The teacher must be alert to potential, with the capacity to 'cradle', to hold gently, not squeezing, suffocating or seeking to make in one's own image, but respecting and remaining in awe of the process of transformation and emergence.In a celebration of the triumvirate of ethics, collaboration and dialogue, the authors go on to present their view of the wisdom the field of psychotherapy has to offer beyond the consulting room, in a consideration of our day to day relations with our family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues, and strangers we encounter along the way.