kindle 2017-8-1
Peter Lomas (1923-2010)
Lomas was always deeply sceptical about the orthodox approach to the training of psychotherapists. It disregarded, he felt, the ordinary ways in which people helped others in distress. There was, he said, "no reason why a bus driver should not walk into the Freudian Institute and be trained as an analyst, if he were gifted".
This led him to set up (with Ben Churchill and John Heaton) an association for training psychotherapists in London, in 1974, which later became the Guild of Psychotherapists. In 1980, after moving to Cambridge, he was one of the prime movers behind "the Outfit". This was a radical departure in therapy training where students would determine the curriculum and assess one another's readiness to practice. The training was based on ideas of mutuality and autonomy and the belief that genuine learning and creative exploration could take place only in the context of a free and open dialogue. (The training continues today under the more formal name of the Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy.)
True and False Experience (1973)
The Case for a Personal Psychotherapy (1981)
The Limits of Interpretation (1987)
Cultivating Intuition (1993)
Doing Good?: Psychotherapy Out of its Depth (1999)
Committed Uncertainty in Psychotherapy (1999)
Natural Psychotherapy is the last book by Peter Lomas and tells us about his philosophy on psychotherapeutic practice with the benefit of a lifetime's experience.
Peter looks at both the conventional and non conventional approaches and shows us how important it is not to lose sight of the fact that both the patient and the therapist are human beings put into an artificial environment which can so easily distort the natural human relationships required for successful therapy.
Peter passed away in 2010 and this book has taken many years to get together from the original manuscripts. Stephen Logan and Paul Gordon have spent many hours piecing together the chapters from hand written notes and manuscript. (amazon)
No animal, not even our closest relative, the chimpanzee, has adopted a lifestyle that takes it far from its natural surroundings. We, on the other hand, live in cities where we are surrounded by concrete, in which bird-song is replaced by constant mechanical noise; we breathe air that is no longer pure, where the rhythms of the day are disturbed and the stars dimmed by artificial light. We sit in rigid and ungainly postures, our eyes fixed on a screen of moving images; and human relationships are replaced by electronic communication. Children are now rarely able to run out of their homes to play in the fields and woods. (kindle location 146-151)
Appendix: The Rules of Psychotherapy
Having studied psychotherapy for fifty years I have concluded that there are seven rules for successful practice. These are the following:
Say to yourself before each session, ‘I am not Winnicott, nor Jesus Christ. I am Joe Soap, so help me God, and I know bugger all.’
All you’ve got is this person in front of you. He is your only hope. Perhaps he can tell you something, so listen. He is probably more intelligent than you. At least he is not so stupid as to be sitting in your seat.
Silence is not golden. After a while say something if only telling the patient the cricket score.
If you get into a rage, don’t hit the patient. He might sue you. Just say ‘I need a pee’ and go out and meditate for a while. This rule is particularly important if the patient is a Turkish wrestler with homicidal tendencies.
The patient’s money is precious, but you mustn’t be.
Do not worry if you find you are more screwed up than the patient. This is quite normal. It is called the Inequality of the Therapeutic Relationship.
Remember that you can never get it right.
According to Emmanuel Levinas, Man’s relation to the other is primarily ethical. In other words, you will be either good or bad towards the patient. And this will depend on whether your mother was nice to you. Was she? Even if she was nice to you, you could still be in deep trouble. There was this guy from Vienna whose mother was so nice to him that he fell in love with her. ‘My Little Siggy’, she called him, and who could resist that?
These rules never fail. But if they do you could always try beach volleyball.
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