Irvin D. Yalom – The Gift of Therapy

Tags

Book Review, Irvin D. Yalom, Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy, The Gift of Therapy

Absorbing reflections reaching more widely than merely the ‘new generation of therapists and their patients’

I admire the wisdom and compassion expressed in the writing and the thinking behind the writing of existential humanistic psychotherapist Irvin Yalom

Now in his late 80s, Yalom inspires not just those who practice psychotherapy, counselling, psychoanalysis or psychiatry. He is a philosophical thinker, rather than one who focuses on human ‘lesions’ or pathologies. Or, as he simply, profoundly says :

A diagnosis limits vision; it diminishes ability to relate to the other as a person. Once we make a diagnosis, we tend to selectively inattend to aspects of the patient that do not fit into that particular diagnosis

He has written books which tell the stories (anonymised, given narrative structure, and with permission) or particular encounters with patients over his decades of practice. These do not read like dry, clinical, case histories. Yalom inhabits the understanding that what is happening in the psychotherapeutic encounter is what happens in any human encounter – relationship. The therapist, though they must strive to understand their own subjective agenda within the client/practitioner encounter, can never be a robotic observer, but always brings themselves into the field of encounter with the client, as much as the client brings themselves into that field. And the connection itself will shape outcomes.

Yalom also, as to some extent here, writes books which are perhaps a little less geared towards the lay-person, but which might serve as useful guide or instruction to anyone engaged in holding any kind of therapeutic space, whether one to one, or with groups

He also writes a third kind of book, one where he turns deep thinking about philosophy and the questions which surely we all return to, across our lives, the attempt to understand primal ‘whys’ into the form of dramatic narrative. For Yalom is as much a writer, an imaginative, dramatic, shaping one, as he is someone working within the pursuit of emotional, integral healing and wholeness for individuals seeking this in the psychotherapy field.

Something I absolutely appreciate with Yalom is his acknowledgement and laying bare of his own errors, challenges and difficulties in his work. Perhaps this is one reason is so genuinely admired, so genuinely an inspirer – he shows his failures, reveals how the journey of practice goes wrong.

I like the central idea, expressed in many different ways in his books, of holding fast to the idea of the wholeness within the individual, however broken they might appear :

As a young psychotherapy student the most useful book I read was Karen Horney’s Neurosis and Human Growth. And the single most useful concept in that book was the notion that the human being has an inbuilt propensity towards self-realization. If obstacles are removed, Horney believed, the individual will develop into a mature, fully realized adult, just as an acorn will develop into an oak tree

Yalom is always revealing far more than the ostensible subject matter of his books, and, is always writing about meaning with wider reach

I underlined page after page, as being useful to return to, whether thinking about my own professional requirements, or, those deeper thoughts about the ‘whys’

Here is an example, ostensibly Yalom is cautioning against the fashion for shorter trainings, shorter interventions, and the following of rigid single patterns of thought in psychiatric evaluations and treatments, but more is opened out

In these days of relentless attack on the field of psychotherapy, the analytic institutes may become the last bastion, the repository of collected psychotherapy wisdom, in much the same way the church for centuries was the repository of philosophical wisdom and the only realm where serious existential questions – life purpose, values, ethics, responsibility, freedom, death, community, connectedness – were discussed. There are similarities between psychoanalytic institutes and religious institutions of the past, and it is important that we do not repeat the tendencies of some religious institutions to suppress other forums of thoughtful discourse and to legislate what thinkers are allowed to think

The Gift of Therapy UK
The Gift of Therapy USA

Advertisement

John Marzillier – To Hell and Back

Tags

Book Review, John Marzillier, Psychiatry, Psychological Therapies, Psychology, Psychotherapy, PTSD, To Hell and Back, Trauma

A wise, thoughtful, compassionate and skillful book about PTSD revealed through the words of those who have experienced this.

It’s funny how synchronicity works. Because I read Noel Hawley’s highly recommended Before The Fall, which I highly recommend, and which features a small boy who suffers a profound traumatic event, and clearly would be diagnosed with PTSD, and because I have a professional interest in the subject, I was reminded that John Marzillier, a British clinical psychologist and later, psychotherapist had written a book on the subject.

I had been moved and beautifully taught much in another book by him, The Gossamer Thread, where he explored his wide journey of development as a practitioner, and the deep exploration, refining, and ambiguity in human relationships that happen throughout all our lives, within and without any kind of formal therapeutic setting, simply because human beings are complex, and so each and every encounter between self and other is fraught with – an endless possibility.

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry: Promoting the charity Heads Together to open up discussion of mental health issues

So, I started to read the in some ways, more geared towards the practitioner, slightly more left brain, slightly less poetical/metaphorical To Hell and Back: Personal Experiences of Trauma and How We Recover and Move on. And during my reading and reflecting period, mental health, particularly linked to the experience of dealing with psychological trauma, suddenly became positive news, due to Prince Harry, and also Prince William, speaking openly about the deep, hidden effects caused by their mother’s death. Public figures speaking out in such a way, honestly, – particularly public figures who are, not being rude, part of the Establishment rather than famous for flashier, sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyles, not to mention ‘reality TV’ famous only for being famous ‘stars’, will be listened to more seriously.

Expression of emotion is more common, and I would say, generally a good thing, with the exception of the artificial stimulation of emotion in reality TV shows!

But, he also cautions against those who assume it always IS the right approach to bare the suffering soul:

Is avoiding talking about feelings always wrong? I do not think that one can or should make such a categorical statement. So much depends on the context and the person, not to mention their relationships with family and close friends and on timing

Focusing on a wide range of traumatic single events – Marzillier in this book is exploring the kind of ‘out of a moderately clear blue sky’ unexpected and traumatic event, rather than, say the trauma of repeated brutal events from early childhood – the author looks both at the unpredictable horrors caused by acts of deliberate chosen malevolence, and the impersonal ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time’ of major accidents like train crashes due to mechanical failures. Marzillier was, for many years, employed by Thames Valley Police, working with those who have to deal with traumatic events, which arise out of the nature of their work – police, firefighters, army personnel, ambulance personnel. The professionals have to maintain a distance from their own natural ‘alert! Danger! I am under threat! autonomic nervous system response of flight, fight, freeze or dissociation which is our physiological survival response. The fact that they are trained to do this, and have techniques to use, cannot ever completely over-ride that ancient animal response, and this kind of ‘trauma is my 9-5, day in-day out worker’ may well find health problems which arise out of the continual overriding of the normal response to danger – get out of here!

How people feel and behave once they are out of danger and the traumatic event is over is a product of the intensity of the experience itself, the nature of the person and the context – that is, what their life is after the event

As in his previous book, what most blazes out, necessarily and importantly, is Marzillier’s artistry, his compassion, his flexibility and his open-ness to meet each individual he interviews for this book, making space for a joint exploration of their stories. Time and again he cautions against the single fix-it approach to PTSD – and, indeed, to the single, fashionable diagnosis of the condition. There may be other mental and emotional health issues experienced by someone who has been in a ‘traumatic’ situation, and other approaches, other diagnoses may need to be made. Don’t jump to a PTSD conclusion, he cautions.

It is a mistake to sweep all post-trauma psychological reactions into one simple category, or to assume that if someone shows PTSD symptoms then nothing needs to be done but treat the person’s PTSD

At the heart of this book, is the often stated central idea that whatever ‘the diagnosis’ says, that it is a unique individual with all their individual personality, history, belief systems and social networks who is receiving the diagnosis, and there CAN be no ‘one way’ of treatment. As in Gossamer Thread, Marzillier stresses it is the relationship between practitioner/clinician and patient/client which actually matters MORE than any ‘specific’ method. Sure, the practitioner must have relevant skills which can work in this field, and preferably, the flexibility and skill to acknowledge that ‘their’ skillset may not be the right one for THIS client at this point. Marzillier even acknowledges that treatment approaches which lie outside his particular belief system and training, DO work for some people, – with the right practitioner. He is extremely open-minded, whilst being at the same time, a scientist by training.

This book has a lot, highly relevant, to say to both the clinical psychologist and the ‘energy worker’ working in this field.

It is a marvellous book, serious, analytical, warm, open minded and hearted – and, always important, beautifully written, and authentic – he has allowed the individual voices of the many people he interviewed in this book – those who had experienced events, and been diagnosed with PTSD – to recount their stories, and the different treatments and outcomes. These are not, in the main, ‘his clients or former clients’ . They are people who chose to respond to a general request made ‘public’ when he was planning on writing a book on this subject.

To Hell and Back Amazon UK
To Hell and Back Amazon USA

Barbara Taylor – The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times

Tags

Barbara Taylor, Book Review, Medical History, Mental Health, Psychiatry, The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times

Historical analysis of mental health care wedded to an almost unbearably painful warts and warts memoir.

Historian and writer Barbara Taylor’s The Last Asylum is partly an objective analysis of mental healthcare provision from the early provision of ‘places of asylum’ and/or places of incarceration, to the more recent dismantling of long stay psychiatric hospitals in favour of ‘Care In The Community’ . Asylum provision itself, which, at its best can provide a place of safety and community for the vulnerable, can at its worst also be a dumping ground for all kinds of people with mental, emotional or behavioural ‘difficulties’ which are perceived as outside society norms. And moreover can be a place where the lost, confused, furious, terrified or despairing can be treated brutally and abusively

History’s verdict has yet to be delivered, and it is possible that the judgment will be more favourable to the old asylums, at least in some respects, than psychiatric modernizers would like us to believe

Closing asylums, however, has been far from an unalloyed blessing. The change in the way psychological dis-ease has been dealt with was not a move done with completely pure, outcome driven intent. Cost was a huge driver. Like asylums themselves, and how patients fared within them, ‘Care In The Community’ as a concept is hugely variable on the ground, as Taylor, explains. At its best, people are supported back into community by skilled case workers, with provision for sheltered housing, day centres, and a wealth of trainings. Unfortunately the ‘at its best’ is a rare beast in times of austerity, and in the aftermath of Thatcher’s ‘There is no such thing as Society’ ethos, the vulnerable may find themselves with little care, and outside any community.

Anthony Bateman summarized the situation to me : “The relational, pastoral component of mental health care has been eliminated. All that is left now is a mechanistic, formulaic, depersonalised substitute for quality care”

The Last Asylum is not only objective and historical analysis. Taylor herself is/has been one of the vulnerable, from very young. She came from a high-achieving and materially successful Canadian background. Material well-being, as she acknowledges, was certainly helpful to her in one of her chosen routes towards recovery, but material well-being is not of course any guarantee that parents will be able to provide good, supportive, loving and unexploitative grounding for their children. Taylor suffered abuse as a child, the sexual dynamics in her family were disturbing, and the relational messages from both parents, remarkably creepy. Early signs of Taylor’s anxiety, depression and instability were ignored, and it seems there was a fair degree of undermining of her, as well as exploitation.

The lived past is never really past; it endures in us in more ways than we understand

More than half the book is about Taylor’s long experience of breakdown, rage, terror, despair, self abuse and alcoholism, and details her personal experience as a ‘service user’ of mental healthcare provision – including 3 spells as an inmate in ‘The Last Asylum’ –Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, which on its opening in 1851 represented progressive, enlightened treatment of mental health, but very quickly became associated with some of the worst excesses of institutions where the fragile were dumped, forgotten and incarcerated. At the time of Taylor’s 3 admissions there, in the late 1980s, the final one lasting 5 months, the now renamed ‘Friern Hospital’ was already scheduled for closure, under those changed ‘Care In The Community’ drives. But, as Taylor explains, the Hospital provided a place of safety, support and containment for many, and proper provisions for community care outside were often non-existent

‘Colney Hatch Pauper Lunatic Asylum 1851′

As well as support through hospitalisation, Taylor was also lucky in her NHS psychiatrist. She also took the decision to embark on psychoanalysis, privately paid for. Soon, she was seeing her analyst (including during her spells in Friern) 5 times a week. This went on for 21 years.

I know………it gave me pause for thought too.

Friern Hospital now converted as a prime location for luxury flats as Princess Park Manor

And a large part of this book recounts the circular conversations between Taylor and her analyst – she kept journals recording what she said, what he said, what she felt, what her dreams were. This makes for pretty depressing reading to be honest. And, it must be said at times extremely wearing. Taylor is, I think, very honest: there is little attempt to charm the reader, to get the reader to like her – she presents herself as grandiose, self-obsessed, manipulative and without empathy, compassion and understanding for others around her. Indeed these aspects of her nature and behaviour formed a major strand in her analysis However…….though all this meant that her personal story at times became utterly wearing, there had to be far more to her than that, as she also had a group of incredibly supportive friends over the decades, who clearly loved and cherished her, and did not wash their hands of someone who, on the face of it, in her account in this book, does not reveal just why those friends so clearly were and remain her loyal friends.

Poverty is a psychological catastrophe. Anyone who thinks that madness is down to defective brain chemistry needs to look harder at the overwhelming correlation between economic deprivation and mental illness

I value this book for the honesty and clarity which Taylor sometimes expresses about herself – she is well aware that the ‘luxury’ – in terms of how it helped her – of that 21 year journey of analysis was only available because of family funds – for a long, long, time she was too ill, too self-destructive, too drunk to work. And she also answers the questions which I think any reader must have about whether that 21 years was a waste of time and money, whether she could/would have got better without it, and faster, whether some of the ‘fast result’ approaches like CBT would have been a better option, whether, if long term stay in Friern had not been available, could she/would she have got better – or might she have killed herself without any or all of these supports. Indeed did some of the support (those 21 years) actually make her WORSE. As she shows, going into deep analysis is not some wonderfully self-indulgent place, it’s at times excruciatingly abrading, an endless delving for suppurating boils. Most of us find ways to plaster over and avoid our deepest pains, if at all possible.

Homeless feelings are boundless; they sweep all before them. Their violence is as all-engulfing as the primeval experiences – aloneness, helplessness, total vulnerability – that power them. Some memories never lose their potency; they live on in the heartbeat, the muscles, the breath

She is honest enough, in effect, to say she can’t really answer any of that – who knows? Nor is she crassly suggesting that any one approach is ‘the’ approach for the treatment of mental and emotional illness. What she cogently argues against is the taking away of choice. Some people needed the support of asylum; some people needed a longer, more relational safer space afforded by a psychotherapist – or even a psychiatrist who was more than just a quick dispenser of pills on a ten or twenty minute appointment. What we have now is, often, doing no more than placing a plaster over an infected wound, dispensing pills which cosh the symptoms of dis-ease, and create dependency. It’s a one size fits all.

A disturbing, thought provoking book, and a powerful one

The Last Asylum Amazon UK
The Last Asylum Amazon USA

Bee Wilson – First Bite: How we Learn to Eat

Tags

Bee Wilson, Book Review, First Bite : How We Learn To Eat, Food politics

Food from cradle (and before) to grave

I first encountered social historian and food writer Bee Wilson through her brilliant book, Consider the Fork, which looks at history and much more through examining the evolution of cooking, and the implements needed for this.

Wilson is my favourite kind of writer or non-fiction – extensive in research, meticulous citing to enable the interested reader to search further, and, most important of all for me – a gifted weaver of words. However erudite a writer, I need the skills a good novelist possesses – how to tell the story. Essential that this is done in non-fiction as much as in fiction, I think. Bee Wilson knows how to tell the story.

First Bite: How We Learn to Eat is a more personal, different kind of book, though all the strengths of Wilson’s writing, as detailed above, are as impeccably in place. This book takes a long and cool look at the origins of our often disordered eating habits. It is a more personal book because Wilson herself, as she explains, was a disordered eater, tending towards weight gain, attracted to the sugary, struggling with this and that diet. Meanwhile her sibling had another kind of eating disorder.

Food, in lands of plenty, has become a huge problem for man. Fashions in advice for how to change, in the developed world, the curious mixture of obesity and malnourishment which is endemic, is endlessly written about, and the legions of diet gurus all grow fat (metaphorically, one assumes) on the proceeds of the over-fed’s obsessions.

Bee Wilson’s book is not a ‘how to eat more healthily and lose weight’ diet advice or recipe book, though, if that is what a reader is looking for, there is lots of sensible advice to be found within the pages. Rather, what she does, as in earlier books, is to look at a variety of disciplines, from the medical, through to the politics of the food industry, psychology, neurochemistry, culture, sociology, scientific studies and much, much more and blend them together into a remarkably tasty, nutritious, beautifully presented casserole which will leave the reader (well, it did so for this reader), energised, with a feeling of satiety but not over-indulgence, left pleasurably digesting ideas when away from the book, and ready to come back for another meal-read.

Roasted Brussels – Learned Bitter Taste Delight Flicr, Commons Mackenzie Kosut

The book is brimming with all sorts of fascinating facts and ideas. For example, one of the reasons that so many ‘won’t eat their sprouts’ is because we are hard-wired to be alarmed by ‘bitter’. This goes back to our days as omnivorous foragers – bitter tasting plants are more likely to be ones which may be toxic to us – and some plants have evolved ‘bitter’ to deter being eaten, too. Wilson explores, however, the fact that food tastes and fads are a mixture of genetics and nurture. We each have differences in the number of papillae on our tongues, and there is no doubt that there are tastes and smells which some people perceive with ultra-sensitivity, and some cannot perceive at all. Of course, we also learn tastes in the high chair (and earlier) Forced too quickly to eat tastes we don’t like – or, perhaps, not being exposed to a wide variety of tastes during the window of opportunity when ‘new tastes’ are not experienced as threatening, and if, perhaps, we are an individual hypersensitive to ‘bitter’, an aversion to the dark green leafies may be on its way.

                               Later learned bitter delight

I was fascinated to read how recent (and, again, how specific in many ways to the developed Western world) the idea of ‘special food for babies’ is. There are many cultures where the weaning baby eats what the adult eats. And sometimes this includes food we might consider unsuitable for a baby – garlic, for example. And yet – one of the fascinating benefits for breast-fed babies is that the taste of breast milk is never the same, feed to feed, as breast milk will taste of what mother eats. Garlic eating cultures will have garlic habituated babies from the off!

Bee Wilson is a mother of three, and the book has a lot of focus on the developing of food likes, dislikes, disorders and orders, back from not just babyhood, but in-the-womb. A neat experiment was done with a group of mothers who were due to have an amniocentesis. They were asked to take a garlic capsule 45 minutes before the procedure – and those who had taken the capsule had amniotic fluid which smelt garlicky. The baby in the womb is already ‘tasting’ the food mother eats. Other experiments have verified these findings.

       Loving my sprouts early – the other pay-off – bitter dark stuff heaven 
(For the curious William Curley Chocolates So good, so expensive, so luxurious one chocolate is enough rare treat, and satisfies, when savoured)

Wilson was also very interesting about how there are cultural perceptions of different foods being suitable fare for boy children and girl children – and how damaging this is to both boys and girls. Boys are less likely to be pressured to eat up their greens than girls. Meat (and larger portions of meat) is more often given to boys. Salads and sweet things are seen to be more suitable for girls. However – from puberty, girls and women are more likely to be anaemic than men, so actually, girls could benefit from iron rich foods – eg steak, and boys should really learn to be more like girls in their ‘eating up their greens!’

I could go on and on and on about this book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the politics of the food industry, health, children’s health, – or in the collection of fascinating facts to astound your friends with!

Highly recommended

I was lucky enough to receive this as a digital review copy from the publisher, Fourth Estate, via NetGalley

First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon UK
First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon USA

Chris Mackey – Synchronicity

Tags

Book Review, Chris Mackey, Positive Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychology, Synchronicity

An interesting book which might not quite reach its deserved audience

Chris Mackey’s Synchronicity is a fascinating look at this phenomenon, which is at the same time not completely satisfying, as, for this reader, its tone means it may well be more likely to appeal to the New Age converted (of which, to a large extent I can surely count myself a member) but fail to appeal to those who could or might be converted by the well argued theory and research to take this book as seriously as it deserves to be.

Some of the information, and, perhaps more, the at times ‘Wow!’ ‘Awesome!’ tone, makes the book appear to come from the scientific equivalent of what might be thought of as the ‘loony left of psychology’ When in fact, the focus is much more grounded and pertinent.

Mackey is clearly a respected and experienced psychologist and therapist. He is a Fellow of the Australian Psychology Society. Fellowships are an honour bestowed on those who are influential and have made positive contribution in their field. An honour, moreover, bestowed by one’s peers. He has worked within a public setting in hospitals, and has his own private psychology practice, and has been working in the field for over 35 years.

He is a passionate, thoughtful, persuasively articulate advocate of what might be called Positive Psychology. Mainstream pharmaceutically based psychology and psychiatry has increasingly become focused on what might be thought of as ‘lesion management’ rather than health recognition. In other words, the identification of the illness, the syndrome, the abnormality of dis-ease. And this generally means a reductionist and biochemical approach to management. The complex politics and organisation of this has been brilliantly explained in James Davies’ Cracked – Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good.

Holistic/Positive Psychology recognises that in every living organism forces of health/wholeness/stability – or the potential to achieve this always exists, as well as the opposite potential to entropy and disorganisation.

Western medicine has a focus around rectifying symptomatic dis-ease – and this is of course a very useful and productive paradigm, but it is not the only useful and productive approach. Other medical systems such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine focus less on the symptomatic analysis of the specific ‘wrong’ and more on what is the whole pattern of imbalance that symptoms are only a reflection of. This does represent a different approach as the pattern indicates the direction of ‘wholeness’ which still exists. A movement away from balance still indicates that relationship with the balance point. In TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) deficiency in flow of Qi has corresponding stagnation, excess, blockage.

In the field of Western psychology there are practitioners and theoreticians, and methods, where the emphasis is on understanding that the ‘lesion’, the wound, can be in fact the pointer to the direction in which health and wholeness lie, and that psychic wounds in fact show not only the potential for health and wholeness which is always present, but is the means by which healing manifests. This may sound barking, but, considered simply, it is the breaking of a bone, the wound to the skin, the being laid low by infection which galvanises the complex responses to repair and remodel tissue or to fight infection. Similarly those woundings to the psyche are also calls to where repair, remodelling and maintaining integrity will arise from. Unsurprisingly Mackey, an advocate of Positive psychology, explores the legacy of Jung, Maslow, Ken Wilbur and others, whose approaches have been around the psychology of health, individuation, peak experience and the like. Giving the psyche its weight and place.

Jung’s snappily titled (!) Synchronicity : An A-causal Connecting Principle, defined synchronicity as the connection of two or more, seemingly random occurrences, as not being ‘random’ or ‘chance’ but as meaningful, and common. These could vary from the experience many have, of having the thought of someone enter your head, someone you may not have thought about or had connection with, for some time, and an instant later, the phone rings, you pick up, and it is that person. Or it could be something more symbolic – Jung’s interest in the phenomenon initially being sparked from this direction – a patient told him about a dream in which she had been given a golden scarab (the dream was one which was a highly charged, meaningful one, full of symbols which were potent for the dreamer and the analyst) At the moment the analysand was describing her dream, came a tapping on the closed window in the room. Jung opened the window and an insect flew in – a scarab type of beetle, greeny gold in colour.

“Cetonia-aurata” by I, Chrumps. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

Jung’s developing idea about synchronicity, which is seen as something of a pointer, something encouraging us towards a noticing, a kind of indication that you are in-the-flow, which Mackay describes as ‘ticks from the universe’ were formed in part out of discussions he had had with Einstein, and had encouragement from another ‘father of quantum theory’, Wolfgang Pauli.

Mackey also explores these connections, and provides some welcome, unflaky breaking the phenomenon away from the ‘spooky-woo’ dismissable. It is specifically ‘entanglement’ which interests him – on a quantum level:

The term ‘entanglement’ describes a relationship between two or more particles, or other objects, that have interacted with each other and then been separated. Bell’s Theorem (physicist John Stewart Bell) hypothesized that two or more such objects would somehow remain connected with each other, functioning as a single system. This mean that any induced change in one twinned particle, such as an electron, would lead to an instantaneous and complementary change in the other, regardless of how vast the distance that separated them

Easy-peasy, eh!

These kinds of ideas and reflections, though echoing many writings found in the New Age section of bookstores – or in long ago written texts on Eastern mystical thinking – are coming from that strange place called quantum physics, and from quantum physicists, trying to find ways to understand some of the phenomena happening at this level

And I must say, that describing all this through the perspectives of rationalising, without the kind of ‘Wow! Awesome!!’ wide-eyedness which often permeates ‘New Age’ books and makes the sceptical, unsurprisingly, dismiss the whole idea as something arising from the relicts of old hippies who dropped too much suspect chemistry in their dim and distant, is very very welcome indeed.

But……….there is ‘stuff’ in this book which troubles, however much I admire Mackay’s honesty about his own experiences. Which are thus : Synchronicity has been something which he has been aware of, in his own life, and usefully stayed open to. He has also, inevitably, in his professional life, attracted patients who noticed synchronicity, or synchronicity became a kind of tool which could be helpfully used in sessions. So there are examples and underlinings which Mackey gives, in clear, and understandable fashion.

What there also is, which increasingly creeps in, is precisely that tone of ‘Wow! Awesome!’ which begins to seem a little off-kilter, a little out-of-balance. And Mackey himself has had experience of ‘breakdown’ – a diagnosis of a hypomanic episode. During this, he was dizzyingly ‘synchronicitous’, and it is the reading of the chapters where he honestly recounts his ‘Wow!’ ‘Awesome’ and the recounting voice (to my mind) has a kind of ferociously over-bright, over-loud ‘Wow!’ ‘Wow!’ ‘Wow!’ quality to it that makes it a little hard to read. He is honest enough to let us know that during this period some of his colleagues thought (and told him) that he was psychotic.

Later, Mackey analyses his own experiences, and concludes he may have fallen into a kind of enlightenment trap – that of ‘psychic inflation’ a sense of grandiosity, specialness (which of course also happens in the ‘manic’ stages of bipolar disorder)

A writer Mackey met on a retreat, very broadly in sympathy with what Mackey has really spent his professional life involved in – furthering Positive Psychology, working with that impulse to wholeness within living organisms, embracing what might be called our spiritual nature, rather than reducing everything about a person to ‘dysfunctional chemistry’ and medication – warned Mackey not to get so focused and caught up in synchronicity. He felt Mackey had become so over-excited by it that he might overlook the ‘fundamental spiritual principles’

Translating that to my experience reading this book, it seems to me that however laudable his honesty about his own experience has been, that it is precisely the over-emphasis on his personal story, told in such a different voice from the rest of the book, which may end up side-lining what is surely an important book which has much to say about the ‘fundamental principles’ of bringing Positive Psychology, humanity, and meaningful, unreductionist ways of treating mental illness, and, perhaps more importantly, fostering and growing human wellness, into wider use. I do feel that it is the over-emphasised weight of that personal story which may lose Mackey a far more useful audience – the unconverted, the sceptical, than this book really deserves. It may not travel much beyond those New Age Shelves. Which will be a shame.

I do recommend it. The fully converted are unlikely to find it controversial, but I hope those less convinced might read it for the well-argued stuff.

I received this as an ARC for review from the publishers, Watkins, via NetGalley. It will be published in the UK next month, and in the States also, though with a much expanded title, which rather suggests its self-help market – nothing wrong with that, I just think it might have had a more professionally influential appeal. And perhaps some of the earlier, cooler stuff might not be sufficiently grab-able for those wanting more instructional self-help ‘how to’

Synchronicity Amazon UK
Synchronicity: Empower Your Life With The Gift Of Coincidence Amazon USA

Gill Farrer-Halls – The Spirit In Aromatherapy : Working With Intuition

Tags

Aromatherapy, Book Review, Gill Farrer-Halls, The Spirit In Aromatherapy : Working With Intuition, The Therapeutic relationship

The Aromatherapeutic Encounter

Gill Farrer-Halls’ ‘The Spirit In Aromatherapy’ is an interesting book which indeed covers an area which does not yet have a flood of books in the niche.

To be honest though, I would say this ls much less a book about aromatherapy and the essential oils, though they do figure, it is more a book about the nature of the therapeutic relationship itself, from a bodyworker, specifically one who works with aromatics, perspective.

And as such, it is very welcome

The field of aromatherapy literature is well supplied – indeed, one could be forgiven for saying, oversupplied, with books both for the lay-reader and the practitioner, many of them merely repeating what was said before by somebody else.

Some of the more specialist books written for professionals, by professionals, do indeed have more unique and interesting information to give. There is a tendency to view the oils purely as chemistry however, as aromatherapy has moved itself away from ‘fluffy feel-good’ and sought to engage with the phytopharmacology of the oils.

Practitioners also know, however that what happens within sessions may be far more than could be explained by the protocols of ‘English aromatherapy’, with highly diluted oils applied in massage. And, indeed more than can be explained by the physiological benefits of massage.

The missing part of the equation is ‘the placebo’ of the healing response. I don’t mean this pejoratively – to say ‘the proportion that would get better without intervention’ is to fail to respect the nature of that ‘would have got better’

All healing interventions, whether by Big Pharma or by modalities which work, even if the precise mechanism of their working is not understood, employ and use placebo – it is just that the precise tools differ.

Farrer-Halls, in this book is looking at the relationship between practitioner and client; if you like the ‘sacred space’ of connection. She is a practising Buddhist, and offers the idea of approaching the client with empathetic awareness, intuition, born out of good prior learning, of course, but still, being present within sessions with open-minded, open-hearted attention.

Although all training in the UK has ‘the therapeutic relationship’ as part of the syllabus, it is often far less central than it needs to be.

There has arisen, within some bodywork modalities, primarily because some of their practitioners came not from a prior background as bodyworkers, but a prior background as psychotherapists, a much more subtle awareness of the importance of the relationship itself, and the spaciousness and sensitivity the practitioner needs to bring

This, despite the exercises to develop sensitivity and intuition by the practitioner into the nature of their oils, and what one might call the ‘psychospiritual aspect’ of them, is, I think, the real end of what Farrer-Halls is laying out in this book, which is a thoughtful, and well-written one.

                  Bursera graveolens Phytoimages. siu.edu Nickrent, D.L.

The attentive reader will not be learning so much about the oils themselves, in following the exercises to develop intuition towards them which Farrer-Halls suggests, they will be developing finesse in intuition itself, finesse, presence and consciousness about the process work which undoubtedly happens in attentive hands-on work, making it far more potent than just the releasing of muscular knots, the improvement of circulation and lymphatic drainage, and fluffy ‘pamper’

I was delighted to receive this as a copy for review on digital download, from the publishers Jessica Kingsley/Singing Dragon. As said on another review, this publishing house produces serious, thoughtful, books on health and well-being, rather than flaky, irresponsible or let’s cash-in on vulnerable people’s insecurities ones.

The Spirit In Aromatherapy : Working With Intuition Amazon UK
The Spirit In Aromatherapy : Working With Intuition Amazon USA

David Bez – Salad Love

Tags

Book Review, Cookery Book, David Bez, Salad Love

Vegetarians, Vegans and Raw Food Eaters can happily frolic through these pages. Others are also welcome. Five Yums Rating!

David Bez’s jolly book encouraging healthy, inexpensive, quick at-your-desk made lunches is really well thought out.

Bez is, as he tells us, not a chef, but he is from Italy, loves food, and works in ‘creative’. He is also a father, and cares about eating fresh, in season, delicious quality food. And he has limited time for lunch, taken at his desk. He has chosen the option to prepare a variety of fresh salads, which can be quickly put together in less time than it takes to queue in the local supermarket for a sad sandwich

His art director background is written all over the great presentation, and excellent design of this book.

The recipes are divided into the four seasons, and what is easily available. Some of it involves being a little thoughtful the night before, and cooking a few extra vegetables, grains, pulses (or, okay for those of you that eat the other stuff, putting aside some of the dead flesh) to become part of your lunch salad.

Forget lettuce, tomato cucumber; tomato, cucumber lettuce; cucumber tomato, lettuce and on, and on, Bez will have you happily assembling all sorts of goodies, – I advise a quick ‘look inside’ the book to whet your imagination, but a few recipes I flicked at random – yellow pepper, broccoli, chilli and coconut cream; goat’s cheese, kale, cucumber and tomatoes; cavalo nero, avocado and sprouted beans.

Broad Beans Mozzarella and Courgette from Salad Pride Blog

I can hear those flesh eaters grumbling………….fear not, there is plenty for you. What Bez does is to define each recipe as being Omnivore, Pescatarian, Vegetarian, Vegan or Raw.

Obviously the omnivore is for the everything including animal eater , the pescatarian fish eater and the rest, the vegetarian has nothing which had a face, but does include dairy or egg., the vegan contains no ingredient from an animal – and the raw will always be an option which is not only vegan but had no heating applied – so for example, it could include sprouted pulses, but not cooked pulses, as protein source (he doesn’t include sushi in raw, it belongs, properly, to pescatarian)

But what is absolutely BRILLIANT is that for every recipe he gives an adapted option for one of the other groups. There ARE quite a few omnivore or pescatarian recipes, but only 10 of the omnivore or pescatarian main recipes have an adaptation which is the other flesh based one.

And for those on the most restricted diets of all (the raw food eaters) there are a lot of recipes! So this lovely book gives options for all

Chicory strawberries and fennel pic from Salad Pride Blog

Not only are the recipes themselves tempting and delicious, but I particularly love the THOUGHT which Bez has put into it. You can search yourself a recipe in different ways…the index helpfully will give page numbers for, for example, Vegan Main, Vegan alternative and the like – and there is the search by ingredient. Got some pak choi you want to use up? No problem.

Bez ‘deconstructs’ the layers of his salad, so every recipe will have a base (generally a salad leaf, but it might be a grain, then vegetables and or fruit, a protein component, toppings – nuts, seed, and the like, fresh herbs, and finally the dressing – which might be vinaigrette style, pesto style, or creamy style – some 25 varieties of dressing.

And if you run out of ideas and need some more he even has a salad blog called Salad Pride, where you can tiptoe through the garden gathering more goodies for lunch and breakfast! (from which site I have cut and pasted some hunger inducing pics)

I received this as an ARC from Amazon Vine UK
Salad Love Amazon UK
Salad Love Amazon USA

Jennifer Peace Rhind – Listening To Scent: An Olfactory Journey With Aromatic Plants and Their Extracts

Tags

Aromatherapy, Book Review, Essential Oils, Jennifer Peace Rhind, Listening To Scent: An Olfactory Journey With Aromatic Plants and Their Extracts, Natural Beauty Products, Perfumery

Olfactory deconstruction so fine that I could smell the odours in my mind. Very scented heaven!

I read Jennifer Peace Rhind’s book on olfaction and natural perfumery, and became almost dizzy with delight.

I did not need to be told from the author’s profile at the end of the book, that she has been deeply involved in a journey with aromatics, and with the essential oils and absolutes as aromatics in particular, for many many years. Her absolute knowledge from experience, as much as from her own studies and reading of other texts on the subject, is absolutely obvious.

And, as important to me as depth knowledge and creative thinking on a subject are – Rhind is also a clear and inspiring writer.

Though this book is particularly geared towards those who may be interested in, or are already, making natural perfumes and perfumery products, it will also be of deep interest to those who are involved in the therapeutic side of working with the essential oils. Despite my own relationship over many years with those oils therapeutically, I was absolutely delighted to find that Rhind was teaching me new information here.

Even for those who primarily are working therapeutically, aesthetic blending may well be part of the mix, particularly when working with clients whose prime reason for treatment is dis-ease presenting in psyche, or with causes from psyche, or those with chronic conditions, where the feel-good hedonic aspect of those oils will absolutely need to be considered.

Rhind explains very clearly the complex physiology and psychology of olfaction, how and why odour has its effects. However, the main thrust of her book is like spending time with a wonderful, creative educator who teaches practitioners of artistic disciplines – the book de-constructs the creation of perfumes, and, best of all, presents the aspiring (or experienced!) perfumer with a really in-depth programme for developing and refining their olfactory sensitivities, both in systematic, left brain ways, with wonderfully structured exercises, and with right brain, creative, playful, olfaction-as-meditation exercises.

                        Free on Pixabay, Optimusius1 photostream

What I am particularly enthused with in her writing is the absolute sense of generosity and empowerment which shines out. She is not laying down rigid formulaic monkey-see, monkey-do, she does that wonderful thing of giving the reader a brilliant tool box, the understanding of what the tools can and cannot do, and then says, metaphorically – go make, explore, learn from your own experience.

There is an excellent amount of safety information, specific information about chemistry in each of the oils and absolutes mentioned, to keep perfumers aware of cautions which may be needed, skin sensitivity issues and the like.

I particularly appreciated the information on the aromatic profiles of individual chemical constituents, in isolation. Many of us with familiarity with the oils and absolutes may not have encountered that wide a palette of each component as a stand-alone, so, I am looking forward, from descriptions of the odour notes of the isolate, and my own knowledge of essential oil chemistry, to tease apart the full odour of a particular botanical

Her book is meticulously and brilliantly referenced, with academic thoroughness, and gives those who want to find out more left brain stuff the detailed information to find it

I was absolutely delighted to get offered this as an ARC from the publishers, Singing Dragon, via NetGalley. And just a word on Singing Dragon – they have a great and growing reputation as publishers of books in the complementary medicine field which are thorough, serious, innovative, sensible texts. To be honest, the fact that Rhind’s book is published by Singing Dragon let me know in advance this was going to be a good ‘un

Listening To Scent Amazon UK
Listening To Scent Amazon USA

Tom Hunt – The Natural Cook: Eating The Seasons From Root To Fruit

Tags

Book Review, Cookery Book, Recipes, The Natural Cook: Eating the Seasons From Root To Fruit, Tom Hunt

Eat well, eat local, eat in good time

I’m not really quite sure why I failed to post this wonderful book on this blog,  given my enthusiastic review of it (after receiving it on Amazon Vine UK) on Amazon. I think I was a little restrictive in ‘what is this blog about’. As I fairly often review cookery books, why not? It was probably thinking I’d have to create another category, and the hard work that entails. My inner sloth protesteth! But this is too good a book to give way to that sloth………

Tom Hunt’s The Natural Cook is rather more than just another book of visual food porn, tempting you into your kitchen to try (and fail) to produce stunning results after a lot of time, heavy duty shopping and sourcing of rare ingredients shipped by rocket from Mars. Or at least air freight from across the world.

Hunt’s mission is to help us save our money, save our time, delight our eyes, taste-buds and tums, at a price which doesn’t cost the earth for future generations.

Although this is not a vegetarian cookbook (which will probably delight many) the star performers here are players from the vegetable, rather than animal, kingdom.

Divided initially into four quarters, to mark the four seasons, Hunt picks a few plant ‘stars’ typical of the season, and then gives a good 8 to 10 recipes with that star player as main ingredient. He offers 2 methods of preparation for each, and then sundry recipes involving that method. Advice is also given on the storage of left-overs from each recipe and indeed where it would be advisable to make extra in order to have freezer food for later.

A full list of the ‘players’ available in their right season is also given

His aim is to reduce food waste to a minimum, so ways of using left-overs are also included, making them part of other dishes.

This is all high end, easy prep (for the most part) gourmet, healthy, delicious and stylish food – designed to make the cook and the diner feel equally good and delighted, without sacrificing hedonic pleasure to dutiful , healthy, but rather dull eating.

As mentioned earlier, it is not a vegetarian cookbook, I guess a good quarter of the recipes involve inexpensive cuts of meat or fish, but certainly some of the meaty or fishy numbers could I think be adapted by the vegetarian cook, using tofu or pulses, as for the most part the flesh food is more Eastern and Mediterranean in quantity – if a recipe includes meat it is in smaller amounts, not groaning trenchers of severed limbs and the like – hence the possibility of replacing, for example, a recipe of asparagus and mackerel sashimi with pickled ginger, orange and soy dressing with smoked tofu in place of the fish.

Because I AM vegetarian, I’ve found a flesh free video of Tom demonstrating how to make a dish – there are some one’s I hid behind a couch, rather than watched, sobbing plaintively.

In a sense, though undoubtedly delivered with style and panache, Hunt’s recipes invitingly call out to the home cook to adapt and experiment with what you have to hand in YOUR cupboard – it is easy to see these are recipes designed to release your creativity in the kitchen, not stifle it into nervous following of rigid instruction.

I particularly like Hunt’s using up everything possible from the cooking process in interesting ways – a lovely example, from our current ‘apricot season’ is, having poached your fresh apricots, perhaps for an apricot melba, reserve the poaching liquid to add to white rum, lime juice and sugar and, hey presto, a daiquiri!

This is a cookery book with a lot of heart, joy, compassion and passion, as well as stuff to make the diner drool with anticipatory pleasure, and the cook happy in that fine dining can be produced without spending a life-time turning a lettuce leaf into something to be submitted for the Turner prize

The look inside lets you see some recipes, so its easy to try ‘is this my kind of food; do the recipes work; are they do-able or just faff’ etc, and the index also gives a fair idea of the recipes.

Hunt, as I think is explained in the look inside section, has based his cooking on excellence in home and traditional dishes – ‘regional cooking’ where the regions take in other countries as well, but this is not about cooking as art form or cooking using fashionably rare and highly exotic ingredients, and you won’t need to purchase arcane equipment in order to achieve fabulous results. No foams, no jus, no blowtorches.

Readers from outside the UK may well of course find that the availability of product, and the time of the year it is locally available won’t dovetail to perfection the way it does in the UK, and that you may wish to adapt recipes from UK local produce, with your own local produce. As stated earlier, Hunt really encourages that sort of creative, adaptive approach. he is a wonderfully relaxed, confidence inspiring cook, rather than one of those who will leave you sobbing because you followed the recipe to the nth degree and ended up with something looking like a dog’s dinner, and tasting so hideous that even the dog walked away from it. Recipes, I imagine, invented by star hissy fit prima donna chefs whose aim is to humiliate the home cook!

Tom Hunt’s lovely, enthusiastic and welcoming sharing of his food beliefs and scrummy recipes are further available on his blog tomsfeast.com which I for one will be bookmarking

The Natural Cook: Eating The Seasons From Root To Fruit Amazon UK
The Natural Cook: Eating The Seasons From Root To Fruit Amazon USA

John Marzillier – The Gossamer Thread: My Life As A Psychotherapist

Tags

Book Review, CBT, John Marzillier, Psychological Therapies, Psychotherapy, The Gossamer Thread: My Life As A Psychotherapist

The Gossamer Thread and The Boundless Ocean

I thoroughly appreciated John Marzillier’s wonderful book on psychological therapy, as the reading of it caused deep reflection which led me into many fields. Not least of which is the whole relationship we have with the reflective activity of reading itself. Doors open, horizons widen, intense emotional experiences and thoughtful, reasoned self-questioning occurs; ideas become developed or discarded; change happens.

I most value those books, fiction or non-fiction, which take me into these areas.

Marzillier’s beautifully titled book explores his own development in the field of psychological therapy, and the development of particular therapeutic approaches, as much as it also explores his successful or less than successful experiences with clients, suitably anonymised, and often with stories changed, to also protect the confidential integrity of the client’s story, in case a former client reads and thinks ‘that is me!’

John Marzillier almost stumbled into clinical work by default, beginning to work using behavioural techniques – a very reductive, lab-rat approach (or so it seems to this reader) in the late 60s and early 70s. The model, it seems, was heavily based on physiology and learned behaviours, biased towards large scale statistical ‘objective’ scientific studies, and drew much of its methodology from observed animal behaviour. However, Marzillier was beginning to feel uneasy, as ’something’ was missing in this approach, and almost by instinct he found himself, through a more dynamic engaged relationship with individual clients, drawn to exploring thought processes and even gaining curiosity about ‘back stories’

In fact, he was moving closer to embracing the role of the relationship between client and practitioner as integral to treatment. The ‘relational field’ approach though was still in the future for his work. This is a concept central within psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytical approaches, but was barely engaged with by the more ‘impartial’ scientific observational ideology of the behavioural approach.

He began to formally train in a then new discipline, cognitive therapy, examining the internal thought processes, the scripts and dialogues which run through our heads. Cognitive therapy of course, in tandem with the earlier behavioural approach, became mainstream as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

My sense, reading this book is that perhaps Marzillier was always as much an artist as a scientist, and therefore, by his own nature, more likely to find that any approach which has fairly set protocols, and a fairly rigid methodology might quickly begin to seem as if it were missing something. It seems to me that no one method or approach, in this field, is ever going to be successful with all people, at all times. What the left brain approach lacks is the imaginative gestalt, the whole-person poetry of the various strands of ‘relational’ right brain methods. Science versus art of psyche.

Marzillier ended up having a kind of revelation, listening to a lecture given by Dorothy Rowe, well-known for her work in the field of depression, about the centrality of core belief and how it can become entwined with one’s very identity. A belief may be useful or destructive, but even a self-destructive and painful core belief can provide the security of comfort – a reinforcements of the sense of self. To LOSE, for example, the certainly that life is meaningless or you yourself are worthless and bad things happen to you because you are worthless can be a frightening change too far – though a belief may or may not be a helpful one to an individual,  – and may or may not be right, it is YOURS. We all struggle with complex responses to being WRONG

His process of progression from scientific certainty, where the steps are known, and the methods can be approached sequentially, so that the method, not the person employing the method ‘makes’ the cure, eventually led him to the uncharted, waters of the mysterious ‘unknown’ of other, and the personal, uncertain route of that more narrative, right brain approach. I had a sense of the psychodynamic psychotherapist (a further training in this followed) like a boat in the middle of an ocean, lacking a map, with destination unknown, steering by instinct, feeling, sense, gut reaction on a journey of trust with his client. This sort of work comes closer to the relationships we have with ‘the others that are not self’ as we move through life. There are forms and structures, rough maps and sketched instructions which guide us, but the relationship between self and any other is something like a dance, which though the steps may be known, veers off into something jazzy, freeform, improvisational. Things may go horribly wrong, and the dancers fall over, step on each others’ toes – but they may also get to a dazzling, inventive, dynamic place with their dance.

Later, his journey takes him into analysis, to experience the procedure from the other side. He is as thoughtful about himself as an analysand, as he is about his patients, teasing out his sense of the process, and his resistance

As Marzillian points out, there are difficulties in psychoanalysis being properly verified by the statistical tools – because it is not dealing in certainties, but in ambiguities – the subjectivity of the practitioner is always within the encounter. There is not a set protocol of method, session to session, with set aims and objectives. This is the very real challenge of that therapy. It seems to me that IF the practitioner is both skilful, and congruent , on some deep level, with the client, the work can be amazing, profound, transformational. It is about much more than the client being free of the ‘symptom’ which brought them into treatment, and about much more than the client being ‘made well’ by the method – or by the therapist using ‘the method’. Instead, there is the possibility of (like with any authentic human encounter), both participants stepping into ‘meaning’ An epiphany of sorts, if you will. The big problem of course, is that it always beset around by those IFS.

Like that other wonderful writer in this field – the humanistic, existentialist psychotherapist Irvin D Yalom, Marzillier is steeped with a sense of art, awareness of metaphor, the poetic. He often illustrates by using literary allusion – literature is indeed a potent source helping us to understand the depth and vitality of human experience.

Marzillier also writes not only with warmth, clarity and authenticity – but with a fine sense of the absurd humour that is to be found in even the most serious places.

What is also utterly compelling about this journey Marzillier takes the reader through, is that he is a man who accepts the confusions, the hesitations, the contradictions within any ‘method’ No wonder he embarked on so many trainings, with that recognition that any one party line is too reductive and fixed to capture human exchanges in all their complexity

Or, as he more cogently puts it

If I have learned anything from a lifetime career as a psychotherapist, it is that there is no universal truth, that everyone is different, and that you, the reader, should take what I or anyone else tells you about psychotherapy with a large pinch of salt

The Gossamer Thread Amazon UK
The Gossamer Thread Amazon USA