An exploration of the extensive intra-personal, interpersonal and group dynamic landscape of human experience pertinent to the understanding of the human shadow in the training of psychotherapists. Using phenomenological enquiry this book invites unique, in-depth experiences, provides new insights and addresses the complexities and diversities inherent in the emergence and containment of shadow experience in psychotherapy training. This book takes the reader through a process of qualitative research and invites the reader to explore his or her own relationships to the love of others, through the exploration of all the things that love is not. It argues that without hate we cannot truly love. Interspersed throughout the book are suggestions for personal exploration and it is hoped that reading this book will both stimulate practitioners to a process of self-reflection and questioning, and also support practitioner researchers in their own journey to self-understanding.
Prior to coming into the psychotherapy profession, Kate Wilkinson had fifteen years experience in the National Health Service. This was primarily as a psychiatric nurse in acute in-patient settings that housed "seclusion" rooms for potentially aggressive patients. She has challenged her colleague trainers and institute leaders to explore the place of shadow phenomena in the caring profession of psychotherapy.
INTRODUCTION -- Surveying the crossing -- Taking in provisions -- Charting the waters -- Navigating a route -- Weathering the storm -- Life at sea -- Be calmed -- The journey ends; the journey begins
'I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.'- Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Author of the best-selling The Invitation, The Dance, and The Call'If we fail to accept our own shadow, then all the patient learns from us is how to fool himself and the world.'- Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, Author of Power in the Helping Professions