We live in a newly ordered world. Existing clients have, to a large extent engaged with electronic means to continue their work and some seem to now prefer this. It allows for them to jot things down, to sit back in their own home, car and workplace. Sessions take place in unusual settings and in … [Read more…]
As I sit in shock of this unparalleled time in modern history, it is important I remember that we have never been and never will be complete masters of our circumstances. I have to remind myself that it is natural to want to resist the changes that are culminating on what seems like a daily … [Read more…]
As I reflect on my career so far, one of the things that stand out is the diversity of cultures I have worked with. I grew up in Lebanon, studied and trained in London, practiced in Beirut and in Dubai, then moved to New York City, and am now in Orange County, California. During these … [Read more…]
Urban (bedroom) myths of heterosexual men and sex abound: men think of sex every seven seconds, men are always up for sex, bigger is better. The media, Internet chat-rooms, online relationship advisors and the scrutiny of sexual relationships in particular, is producing a “sexualisation” of culture (Atwood, 2004). Yet around one third of men and … [Read more…]
In 2017 Dr Dwight Norwood (LicSw) wrote a blog about touch in therapy and posed the question was it ‘helpful or harmful’? He states: The creation of an artificial mind-body split in psychotherapy began around the 1970s with the advent of cognitive-based therapies which, I believe, helped contribute to the divorcing of our emotions from … [Read more…]
Dame Maggie Smith, our national treasure, announced, a few years ago, that, following the advice of her agent, she had recently taken up publishing blogs and membership of Facebook, Twitter and “God knows what else”. She was uncertain whether joining this “hideous freakshow, that calls itself the modern age” really profits anyone and I, for … [Read more…]
The […] simplified correlation of specific patterns of behaviour […] will, in the long run, impede scientific progress. Why then, do we persist in the attempt to devise characterologies? The answer is that such classifications […] can for a while be valuable guides in psychological territory in which we feel not yet at home.” … [Read more…]
Given the importance of this contribution and the changes within the profession we invite brief replies, which we may post at a later date. Please direct such replies to Course Director Judi Keshet-Orr. History 1983 to 2002: relatively simple background and first steps Once upon a time, around 1983, a group of professionals (counsellors, psychotherapists, … [Read more…]
For my first Blog ever, I would like to share two stories that I have found useful in difficult situations that I have encountered in therapy sessions from time to time. Those difficult times where I want move between acceptance and change, to elicit some movement, to get unstuck, where what I have been trying … [Read more…]
Pocock captures my thoughts on clinical work when he said “therapists have, I believe, a primary duty of care not to be analytic or systemic or narrative but to be helpful” (Pocock, 2006, p.355). I understand both psychoanalytic and systemic ideas as both important when thinking about experiences of engaging power and difference at the … [Read more…]