Listen Carefully and Other Tales from the Therapy Room
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The therapist uncovered - ten tantalising tales from the therapy room to make you laugh, cry, and reflect.
An intriguing collection of compelling stories that expose our most private and personal concerns: sex and sexuality; death and dying; relationships and identity.Challenging, disturbing and humorous, this collection is a must-read.
Reviews and Endorsements
‘Phil Lapworth’s book is a compendium of compelling stories that hold the reader spellbound and eager for more’
- Jenny Mackewn, Programme Leader for Schumacher Certificate in Leadership
‘Be prepared for deep pain, searing anger, uncontrollable laughter, guilty regret, and touching memories’
- Michael Carroll, chartered counselling psychologist, accredited executive coach
‘Phil Lapworth brings alive the unique art of conversation that is at the heart of psychotherapy’
- William F. Cornell, International Transactional Analysis Association
‘Read and laugh and learn’
- Dr Jenifer Elton Wilson, psychological therapist, senior practitioner BACP
About the Author(s)
Phil Lapworth is a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice near Bath. During his thirty years in clinical practice he has written extensively in the field of humanistic and integrative psychotherapy, including, with colleagues, several text books on various approaches to psychotherapy. In recent years he has turned to writing about therapy via fiction, seeing short stories as a particularly useful medium for reflection, challenge and entertainment for both practitioners and laypeople alike. Added to which, he very much enjoys writing them.
Customer Reviews
Our customers have given this title an average rating of 5 out of 5 from 4 review(s), add your own review for this title.
Tom Wilson on 14/04/2015 10:54:25
(5 out of 5)
Another fascinating collection of stories from Phil Lapworth. Very convincingly written. It left me with the vivid impression that I had been sitting alongside as the clients (and therapist) struggled with life issues, some of which were painfully familiar. Excellent for psychotherapy students and practitioners, as well as a general reader ready to "look life in the eye".
Christina Gray on 15/02/2015 11:36:53
(5 out of 5)
Thought provoking and entertaining. Made me chuckle and reflect in equal measure. Well written and an unusual take on psychotherapy and the human condition. Well worth a read.
Martin Whinney on 17/01/2015 14:50:08
(5 out of 5)
This collection of stories follows the success of Phil Lapworth's earlier Tales from the Therapy Room - Shrink-Wrapped, again inviting the reader into the consulting room and internal world of the fictional psychotherapist Michael Martin as he grapples with the varied concerns of his clients. The tales contain much that is sad, tender and painful to read but are also wry, humorous, irreverent and thought-provoking to both therapist and reader.
In the final story, "Tales out of School" (written in the form of a letter to an intending student) Martin states that 'the correlation between clients and theory often eludes me', finding them at times 'worlds apart'. He comments on how therapists need humbly to accept that sometimes they are 'barking up the wrong tree' and that some unconscious processes can be seen only as 'a possibility, and not as a truth'. He cautions that at times therapists are not 'that important, and our theories even less so' and 'we are going to get things wrong for our clients'. Expressed in his own clear and straight-forward language, Martin debunks the over-complicated jargon of some textbooks and takes to task abusive psychotherapists who impose 'rupture and repair' approaches on their clients - and students. In contrast, he believes in the 'happy, challenging and creative' privilege of working as a psychotherapist, attending closely to the shared patterns in the lives of clients and valuing the uniqueness of each of them in their relationship with the therapist.
The other tales in the book exemplify many of these sentiments and always the positives of a truly client-centred approach to therapy. They engage and entertain and in doing so also subtly teach - and a substantial final section of Reflections on the tales from the author also provides both theoretical background and practical context to challenge readers, be they trainee therapists or not. But as Michael Martin puts it in his letter to his inquiring student, 'my strongest advice is that you read novels!'. Fiction, after all, is probably the most reliable form of reality outside our own lives'. Phil Lapworth's own tales pre-eminently provide just such excellent fictional examples to illustrate this reality.
Julie Kernow on 22/12/2014 22:06:57
(5 out of 5)
I was lucky enough to hear the author read from 'Listen Carefully' at its launch. Half the audience were themselves therapists and the rest of us lay friends and family. We were rapidly united either in communal laughter or sympathy, one following the other in quick succession. Actually, there was probably more laughter as we heard about the woman aged 70 plus, dressed to kill, who said she was 32 and thought the therapist might be too old for her; or the volatile young Goth (a stick insect in bovver boots) who fails to listen carefully, with surprising results.
Over his 35 years practising as a psychotherapist the author, Phil Lapworth , has encountered in his clients many of the major themes of life we all experience and some more individual and unusual ones too. This is a gem of a book, well written and full of humanity and humour. Real clients past and present need not fear as every character described by Phil is entirely fictional, a good old Christmas pudding of a mixture of people and what they bring.
This is a video of the author reading excerpts from some of his fictional short stories in his latest collection Listen Carefully
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