Worldwide, increasingly large numbers of people are seeing therapists on a regular basis. In the UK alone, 1.5 million people are in therapy. We go to address past traumas, to break patterns of behaviour, to confront eating disorders or addiction, to talk about relationships, or simply because we want to find out more about what makes us tick.
Susie Orbach, the bestselling author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies, has been a psychotherapist for over forty years. Here, she explores what goes on in the process of therapy — what she thinks, feels and believes about the people who seek her help — through five dramatised case studies. Originally broadcast as a Radio 4 series, here the improvised dialogue is replicated as a playscript, and Orbach offers us the experience of reading along with a session, while revealing what is going on behind each exchange between analyst and client.
Insightful and honest about a process often necessarily shrouded in…
By listening intently to the narrative and the feelings, and hearing the contradictions that are felt by the individual, therapy tries to situate the person as an agent who can become interested in why she or he acts and feels the way they do and how they can develop a growing emotional complexity.
