Mirror and the Hammer : Challenges to Therapeutic Orthodoxy

'It is surely worth reading, not only by the author's fellow psychiatrists, but also by psychologists in general' - Contemporary Psychology 'I found this book a joy to read. Each chapter sets out the orthodoxy in question, then proceeds to explain lucidly the author's difficulties with this orthodoxy and to suggest an alternative way of looking at the issues' - Self and Society Psychotherapy's influence seems all pervasive today. But to what end? Is helping people really therapy's main mission? This provocative book explores the alternatives to psychotherapeutic orthodoxies on such vital issues as sexuality; the self; the unconscious; creativity; and the dilemma of evil. Erensto Spinelli challenges psychotherapy, asking if it has retreated from its early promise of being a pivotal agent in our attempts to discover what it means to be human, in exchange for its current role as a pacifier of personal and social unease.

Ernesto Spinelli is Professor of Psychotherapy, Counselling and Counselling Psychology and Academic Dean of the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling at Regent's College, London.