Therapy and the Counter-tradition

Manu Bazzano is a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice and visiting lecturer at various schools and colleges, most notably Roehampton University. He teaches philosophy in adult education and has a background in rock music and Zen Buddhism. Bazzano has authored numerous books, and is co-editor of Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies, as well as book review editor of Self & Society – international Journal for Humanistic Psychology. www.manubazzano.com Julie Webb (MA; MBACP) has a background in training, literature and philosophy. She is a counselling lecturer at University Campus Suffolk and a Humanistic Counsellor and Supervisor in private practice in Cambridge. She has previously had an established private practice in Shrewsbury and worked as a counselling lecturer for 5 years at Shrewsbury College of Arts & Technology, offering training and CPD. She is currently a registered visiting lecturer. www.juliewebbcounselling.com

• Part 1 The Threshold Experience 1. ‘Changelings’: The Self in Nietzsche’s Psychology Manu Bazzano 2. What can Therapists learn from Kierkegaard? John Lippitt 3. John Keats and Negative Capability: The Psychotherapist’s X factor? Diana Voller 4. That Piece of Supreme Art, a Man’s Life Nick Duffell 5. Tears of Joy: Pascal’s ‘Night of Fire’ Subhaga Gaetano Failla Part 2 Ethics and Politics 6. Who am I? You tell me: Desire and Judith Butler Julie Webb 7. The Liberation Psychologist: A Tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre Richard Pearce 8. Instances of Liberation in Rousseau Federico Battistutta .9 A Metaphysical Rebellion: Camus and Psychotherapy James Belassie Part 3 Self, Other, World 10. Desire-Delirium: Notes on Deleuze and Therapy Manu Bazzano 11. A Poetry of Human Relations: Merleau-Ponty and Psychotherapy Paul Gordon 12. This Culture of Me: On Singularity, Secrecy and Ethics Eugenia Lapteva 13. Energy Ethics and the Thought of Difference in Luce Irigaray Federico Battistutta Part 4 Therapy, Language, Metaphysics 14. Under Arrest: Wittgenstein and Perspicuity Julie Webb 15. A Penetrating Beam of Darkness John Mackessy 16. Lifting the Curse: Wittgenstein, Buddhism and Psychotherapy Jeff Harrison 17. Amor Fati: Suffering to Become the Person One is Devang Vaidya

'...a fascinating, quality read.' - Private Practice'This welcomed book is recommended for those who wish to consider some potentially life changing implications of, rather than use, philosophy for their therapeutic practices.' - Professor Del Loewenthal, Chair of Psychotherapy & Counselling, University of Roehampton"By reaching outside the increasingly narrow world of psychotherapy, this book offers us much needed resources to re-examine current practice from the proper perspective of the whole of human experience. The writing here returns us to a maturity of thought that is currently lacking in the profession of psychotherapy. We are invited to expand our questions and assumptions beyond ‘evidence-based treatments’, to include philosophical and creative insights. In the process, we regain a little of the personal humility that makes psychotherapy therapeutic in the first place. A real breath of fresh air." - Dr Greg Madison, author and psychotherapist"Offering a clear dialogue between therapy and philosophy, Therapy and the Counter-Tradition is a much needed and most welcome book. In an age of what the editors refer to as "superficial pragmatism", this book promotes and provides philosophical integrity, which is often lacking in training and practice. Focusing on the work of twelve specific philosophers, a poet and a novelist, the book is wide-ranging, informative, and stimulating, while remaining coherent. This is book for thinking and thoughtful therapists. I commend the editors and recommend it highly." - Dr Keith Tudor, Professor of Psychotherapy, Auckland University of Technology, Aotearoa New Zealand, and co-author of Person-Centred Therapy: A Clinical Philosophy (Routledge, 2006)"A tour de force of critical insights--from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein, from Keats to Kierkegaard--Manu Bazzano and Julie Webb have provided a rich banquet of ideas that are orthogonal to the complacency of tradition and the banality of contemporary psychotherapy. Drawing on a wide range of themes—ethics, politics, art, poetry and language—Therapy and the Counter-Tradition revitalizes philosophy as a way of life, offering a new infusion of vitality into the healing of the soul." - Ronald E. Purser, Ph.D., Professor of Management, San Francisco State University"In an age where therapy’s literature is dominated by programmatic, allegedly evidence-based pretensions to scientificity and control, with meaning routinely reduced to superficiality and utility, we desperately need far more material that will fructify imaginations, embrace paradox and the ineffable, and challenge the Tradition of modernity and rationalism that, in the wrong hands, only impoverish the human condition. This exciting book uses engagements with key philosophers, like Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, and Butler, Camus, Deleuze, Irigaray, Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Schopenauer (amongst others), to do just that – a splendid text that is ‘full of being and becoming’, with (thankfully) not an ‘evidence-based’ claim in sight. My only (deep) regret is that this book didn’t exist when I was training as a therapist 25 years ago." - Dr Richard House, former Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy, University of Roehampton, and author of Therapy Beyond Modernity and In, Against and Beyond Therapy