Book dossier

The making of a psychotherapist

by Neville Symington

The Making of a Psychotherapist is a new look at the psychological processes involved in the therapist's work. It is essential reading for all those therapists who regard education as a lifelong process, and who are constantly ready to reexamine themselves and their work. In the first part of The Making of a Psychotherapist, "Personal Qualities," the author reminds us that the word psychotherapy means healing the soul. He follows Melanie Klein's view that the individual has moral responsibility for the state of his own mental health, and that it is the psychotherapist's role to demonstrate this to his or her patients. He then goes on to discuss the traditions and practice of psychotherapy, the psychotherapist's education, the analyst's inner task, imagination and curiosity of mind, mental pain and moral courage, self-esteem in analyst and patient, and the transference. In the second part, "Professional Dilemmas," the author discusses values and his conviction that the disease of moral amorphism has caught hold of the psychotherapy movement.