John Rowan and Michael Jacobs
Preface
Like most of the other pairings of authors in this series, we come from different theoretical orientations. It was never a foregone conclusion that we would see eye to eye, but as we acknowledge in the final chapter, we have in fact learned much from each other in the writing of this book; and we can take some pleasure from our awareness that we have respected each other’s different emphases, which inevitably colour the way we have interpreted material from our own and other orientations. In the first five chapters we have presented as objective an argument as it is possible to do, given the normal bias in any writer. But we have had each other to prevent excesses of enthusiasm for a particular approach! Although our individual intellectual and practical preferences no doubt slip in from time to time, we have attempted to reserve our own views for the dialogue in chapter 6, where something of the discussion that has taken place between us in the course of writing becomes more obvious to the reader.
What we did not know, despite our researches, we could not obviously share with each other or with the reader. Bertrand Russell is said to have replied to a question, what he would tell God if after death he found himself before the judgement seat, ‘Why didn’t you make it clearer?’ We make no claims to omniscience, and it is certain that we have not covered everything that has been written on the subject. And while we own all shortcomings in this book as our own, if there are significant omissions it may also be because some orientations have not made as clear as we would have wished where they stand on the therapist’s use of self.
We have each valued working with another person who takes meticulous care in getting the wording right, who ensures even in the draft stage that references (so important in a book such as this) are up-to-date and accurate, and who promptly returns amended material to the other. It has felt like a good model of co-operative work. The many references to the literature on the subject demonstrate how much we owe to those who have written on the subject. It has not been our primary aim to be original, but rather to record as accurately as possible the thinking about this set of concepts related to the use of the self in therapy. Nevertheless we hope that the particular slant we have given to the subject give this subject some originality in its presentation.
John Rowan Michael Jacobs
London Swanage, Dorset
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
Three ways of being a therapist
2. The instrumental self
Learning and applying the skills of therapy
Tabula rasa: countertransference as a barrier to therapy
The first level of empathy
Neutrality and abstinence
Conclusion
3. The authentic self
Psychodynamic concepts extending definitions of countertransference
Embodied countertransference
Projective identification
The second level of empathy
Identification
Intuition and imagination
Personhood
The wounded healer
Self-disclosure
Conclusion
4. The transpersonal self
Beyond the personal
The person-centred perspective
The humanistic-existential perspective
The Jungian perspective
A third level of empathy
Linking
Not knowing – an alternative view of the transpersonal
Some caveats
Conclusion
5. Training and supervision
Early views on training
Personal therapy
The dynamics of supervision
The use of self in supervision
The transpersonal in supervision
Learning theoretical perspectives
Training and supervision: conformity or self-actualization
6. A dialogue: the authors discuss the therapist's use of self
References
Index
Published by the Open University Press in 2002
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