That complexity and ambiguity can open the door to self-understanding and experimentation by the therapist, who also functions as a model: if the therapist models courage, it may aid the patient in being courageous enough to risk and experiment with change in his or her own life.Ĭh.2: Struggles for Power and Influence contains some important reflections on serious issues. A little later Kottler says that 'I have never really trusted anyone who claims to understand how therapy works. Therapists have to have 'learned to love this sort of ambiguity and complexity' or else probably find another career (p.5). Beyond that, Kottler suggests we go too far in thinking we can always and everywhere pinpoint the cause of change, even after lengthy in-depth study.

Much like Nina Coltart (whom he does not quote or seem to have read), Kottler speaks of the importance of faith in the process, faith in the therapist, as being key factors in helping motivate people to seek and find change. This is especially so if the alignment is right and healthy, when there can be a kind of 'second sight' at work. Kottler notes that therapy can produce an 'altered state of consciousness' in both therapist and patient. Here Kottler echoes something much remarked upon in many other publications: above and beyond theoretical orientation and even certain techniques, the personality, and from it the therapeutic alliance, are fundamental, leading to change not just for patients but also therapists themselves. The ability to effect such change depends in good measure on the therapist's personality.

In this chapter the author sketches out the lofty potential of the therapeutic vocation: the ability to make a change in the lives of others unlike anything else, leading potentially to 'spiritual transcendence' (p.1). He says it is especially aimed at students in all those disciplines who get into one of those professions without always fully realizing the personal consequences, with which he begins the book in Ch.1: The Therapist's Journey. Nevertheless, the author has sought to keep the book updated in light of new developments while aiming it at the widest audience of clinicians from all backgrounds-social work, psychology, counselling, psychiatry. As the author, Jeffrey Kottler, notes in the introduction, it could scarcely have been imagined in the mid-1980s, when this book was first published, how much would change today in the field of psychotherapy-not just advances in techniques, but in psychopharmacology, the insurance industry, and much else besides. This book, On Being a Therapist, is now in its fifth edition (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Jeffrey kottler on being a therapist