Growing Up?: A Journey with Laughter

Reviews and Endorsements

‘The formative years of an analyst are not merely an unusual subject but a delicate undertaking. Patrick Casement handles his remarkably detailed retrospective with lightness, charm and affection through vivid snapshots of family, school, teenage and adult life – vignettes written with humour, sensitivity and an acute sense of irony bordering at times on hilarity. The reader is immersed in what at times can feel like a long lost era in which the themes of war, class, family relationships, friendships, tenderness, loss and love are conveyed with a deceptive simplicity that readers of Casement’s works will recognise.’
- Paul Williams, Training Analyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society and formerly Joint Editorin-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis from 2001-2007

‘This book contains many entertaining anecdotes, but it is also a painfully honest account of Patrick Casement’s childhood and the various forces leading him to become an influential psychoanalyst. The book will be of great interest to all those thinking about how our own and others’ childhood experiences shape us as adults. Patrick’s writings have always urged us to "learn from our mistakes". They have also always helped us to tolerate irreconcilable conflicts of feelings, and this very moving book does that once again.’
- Dilys Daws, Honorary Consultant Child Psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic

‘We might expect a notable psychoanalyst to have a good recall of his early years – but with such humour? I chuckled and laughed out loud. We see the beginnings of Patrick’s independence of thought and his sympathy with those like himself who do not "fit the frame". He finds his calling not to the ordained priesthood that he once considered, but to the priestly task of reconciling people to themselves and the reality beyond.’
- Peter Wheatley, Honorary Assistant Bishop in the Dioceses of London, Southwark, and Chichester

‘Patrick Casement’s seminal contributions to psychoanalysis are known worldwide and deeply appreciated by therapists everywhere. In this fascinating and tremendously entertaining book, Casement recounts the life journey of the man behind the eminent psychoanalyst. His story is a great adventure told with joy and humour. This is a book that will delight readers everywhere who are not only interested in the making of a psychoanalyst, but who love a great story, beautifully told.’
- Theodore Jacobs, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst, the New York and IPE Psychoanalytic Institutes and author of The Possible Profession: The Analytic Process of Change

Customer Reviews

Our customers have given this title an average rating of 5 out of 5 from 1 review(s), add your own review for this title.

Susan Lendrum on 11/02/2016 15:20:08

(5 out of 5)

One of the most humane and fascinatingly intimate books on the psychoanalytic interaction (On Learning from The Patient; 1985, Routledge) shows Casement's capacity to enter the imaginative capacity of both analyst and patient, recognising, if painfully at times, our feet of analytic clay.

Now he has given us another humane, but quite different, set of stories. This time, a laugh-out-loud account of just how the wondrous mishaps, misadventures and misunderstandings of his youth led to the inevitable conclusion that he just had to become an analyst. Such a wonderfully loving account of the human condition has helped me, not only to see the funny side of experience but also, I hope, to grow up a little, in laughter, myself.

Susan Lendrum, Psychotherapist and Supervisor