How do the fundamental elements of experience impact on the practice of psychotherapy? Dimensions of Psychotherapy, Dimensions of Experience explores the three basic elements of psychotherapy - time, space and number - summarising theory, setting it in context and bringing concepts to life with clinical illustrations. Michael Stadter and David Scharff bring together contributions describing how each of these elements, as well as their simple and direct manifestations in the physical world, also combine to form the psychological dimensions of symbolic reality both in the inner world and in the transactional world. They also reveal how, in encounters between patient and therapist, the combination of inner worlds form a new, uniquely psychological, fourth dimension that saturates the activity and experience of the other three elements. This book aims to increase our understanding of the action of the three dimensions of psychotherapy by looking at the elements that constitute the setting and process in which clinicians engage every day. The contributors, all of whom are experienced psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, connect their thinking on the dimensions to clinical practice by illustrating their ideas with case material and examining their impact on general treatment issues. This book will be useful to practicing psychotherapists and psychoanalysts and students of psychoanalysis and philosophy.

In Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing through the Symbolic Process, Robin van Löben Sels uniquely and honestly recounts her personal journey toward a shamanic understanding of psychotherapy. Exploring the disruptive breakthrough of visions and dreams that occurred during her analysis, personal life, and psychoanalytic training, van Löben Sels illustrates how the phenomenology of ancient shamanism is still alive and how it is a paradigm for the emergence and maturation of the psyche in people today. This original book delves into van Löben Sels’s personal experience of the shaman, identifying such eruptions as a contemporary version of the archaic shaman’s initiatory call to vocation. The book is split into two parts. It begins by outlining the shamanic personality in history, recognizing this as an individual that has been called out of a collectively sanctioned identity into a creative life, and the unconscious shaman complex they consequently face, especially in psychotherapeutic relationships. Practical as well as theoretical, the second part outlines the shamanic attributes that underline psychotherapeutic relationships - silence, sound, mask, rhythm, gesture, movement, and respiration - and usefully describes how to use them as asanas for consciousness, or vehicles toward psychological awareness. With clinical examples and personal stories throughout, this book’s unique Jungian perspective addresses contemporary expressions of the shaman complex in our current world. Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing through the Symbolic Process will be essential reading for Jungian analysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training, as well as for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies. It will be especially helpful and illuminating to those who have experienced an involuntary plunge into the depths and who seek ways to articulate their experience.

Toward a Spiritual Psychotherapy collects a series of lectures presented by psychologist Hunter Beaumont over a 10-year period. Covering such themes as relationships, family, healing, grief, mourning, and death, the book features case stories that demonstrate clients’ healing experiences. Practicing in Germany for the past 30 years, Hunter Beaumont has had the unique experience of working with World War II and Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Through this work he discovered that healing requires attending to the soul, a process he describes as an “inner ‘felt sense’ and common, everyday dimension of experience.” Demonstrating how therapists can integrate this more spiritual approach into their practices, Beaumont highlights the particular successes of the innovative family constellations therapy. Developed by German psychologist Bert Hellinger and expanded by Beaumont and others, this therapy takes place in a group setting, with group members standing in for family members or others involved in the client’s problem. A crucial part of Beaumont’s spiritual psychotherapy practice, this method has helped many of his clients release and resolve profound tensions, and offers hope to readers recovering from trauma or PTSD, or simply trying to navigate life’s difficulties.

This collection of life stories offers compelling narratives by individuals from different races, ethnic groups, religions, sexual orientations, and social classes. By weaving these engaging stories with relevant theoretical topics, this unique textbook provides deeper levels of understanding on how cultural factors influence identity, personality, worldview, and mental health. An Instructor’s Resource CD with supplemental materials for each chapter and a helpful internet study site at http://www.sagepub.com/dimensionsofmulticulturalcounselingstudy/ including podcasts and videos offer further opportunities that examine and apply this mosaic of rich subject matter.

Book on interpersonal relationships.

Internal family systems therapy, or IFS, is one of the fastest growing models of psychotherapy today. Focused on psychic multiplicity and the healing effects of compassion, this non-pathologizing therapy has been adopted by clinicians around the world. Internal Family Systems Therapy builds on Richard Schwartz’s foundational introductory texts, illustrating how the IFS protocol can be applied to a variety of therapy modalities and patient populations.Each chapter provides clear, practical guidance and clinical illustrations. While addressing questions from therapists who are exploring the model or wonder about its applicability, Internal Family Systems Therapy is also essential reading for knowledgeable IFS clinicians.

This book provides an in-depth introduction to existential psychotherapy. Presenting a philosophical alternative to other forms of psychological treatment, it emphasises the problems of living and the human dilemmas that are often neglected by practitioners who focus on personal psychopathology. Emmy van Deurzen defines the philosophical ideas that underpin existential psychotherapy, summarising the contributions made by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre among others. She proposes a systemic and practical method of existential psychotherapy, illustrated with detailed case material. This expanded and updated second edition includes new chapters on the contributions of Max Scheler, Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as on feminist contributors such as Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt. In addition a new extended case discussion illustrates the approach in practice. Everyday Mysteries offers a fresh perspective for anyone training in psychotherapy, counselling, psychology or psychiatry. Those already established in practice will find this a stimulating source of ideas about everyday life and the mysteries of human experience, which will throw new light on old issues.

Here Grof presents a useful model of the psyche—a model extended by his thirty years of studying non-ordinary states of consciousness. It is useful for understanding such phenomena as shamanism, mysticism, psychedelic states, spontaneous visionary experiences, and psychotic episodes. The model is also useful in explaining the dynamics of experiential psychotherapies and a variety of sociopolitical manifestations such as war and revolution. This book might have been entitled Beyond Drugs. The second part describes the principles and process of the non-pharmacological technique developed by the author and his wife, Christina, for self-exploration and for psychotherapy. Grof explores in detail the components of this technique. He describes its method, its effective mechanisms, as well as its goals and potential. Its practice is simple, since it utilizes the natural healing capacity of the psyche.

This book provides readers with essential information on the foundations of psychotherapy research, and on its applications to the study of both psychotherapy process and outcome. The aim is to stimulate a reflection on these issues in a way that will benefit researchers and clinicians, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, at different levels and from different perspectives. Accordingly, the book presents a balanced mix of chapters summarizing the state of the art in the field from different viewpoints and covering innovative topics and perspectives, reflecting some of the most established traditions and, at the same time, emerging approaches in the field in several countries. The contributors, who were invited from among the experts in our national and international professional networks, also represent a healthy mix of leading figures and young researchers. The first part of the book addresses a number of fundamental issues in psychotherapy research at a historical, philosophical, and theoretical level. The second part of the book is concerned with research on psychotherapy processes; in this regard, both quantitative and qualitative approaches are given equal consideration in order to reflect the growing relevance of the latter. The book’s third and last part examines research on psychotherapy outcomes, primarily focusing on quantitative approaches. Offering a balanced mix of perspectives, approaches and topics, the book represents a valuable tool for anyone interested in psychotherapy research.