Provocative Therapy turns all accepted wisdom about therapy on its head. Here is a therapy in which the therapist makes fun of the client’s problems, blows them up out of all proportion and suggests crazy and surreal solutions seemingly off the top of their heads. So why does it seem to be effective?
Compassion meditation produces physical effects in the brain, “proving” in terms of Western science that an Eastern spiritual practice “works”. Are compassion and empathy skills which can be developed through meditation, or is this missing the point of a spiritual experience?
The issue of self-harm is gaining a higher profile, in the UK at least, but it still remains to some extent a hidden and misunderstood problem, as evidenced by the stereotype of a teenage girl cutting her arms in a dark bedroom.
There are always people worse off and better off than ourselves and as I see it, we are all interconnected and we can only start with ourselves, both for our own good and the good of the world. Of course I genuinely believe this. But once every few months I get a bulletin from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and it shakes me from head to toe.
How actively useful are boundaries in the therapeutic relationship? They are obviously a part of the ‘real world’ in which both client and therapists live, organising and managing their money and time. But in some humanistic, relationship-based schools of therapy, they seem to bring out a certain contradiction…
We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.
