I’m excited that my first book has been published. How to be a Bad Therapist co-authored by Nick Totton. This new short book has grown out of our successful webinar series of the same name. In it we aim to throw open some windows, to bring fresh air into the discourse about what makes a good or bad therapist and to offer some redefinitions of therapy.
We suggest that therapy isn’t an expert knowledge system, open to being standardised and manualised, but is more akin to local, indigenous, embodied and relational forms of knowledge. Therapy isn’t primarily an academic activity, and we would argue is not best taught in an academic, rigorously assessed context. We are interested in questioning who sets the rules? Are the rules and expectations of how to be a good therapist the most helpful ones? In the search for high standards and protection of the client has something been lost?
Chapters: Good and Bad Therapists (and People); Ethics and Technique; Intimacy, Disclosure, Mutuality and Enactment; Privilege and Power; Therapy as Wild; Play and Relaxation; Conclusion.
For those who’d like to know more we’ve created a video where we introduced the book and speak about the webinar series.
The book is self-published and available on Amazon as either a paperback (£8) or a Kindle (£5).