Description

'Alex Howard has tackled a most complex topic with consummate skill and has produced an extremely stimulating, wonderfully researched and much-needed alternative to the usual literature dealing with issues of identity and self.' - Professor Ernesto Spinelli, School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regent's College, London UK

We live in a therapy culture. What are we to make of this? What would different therapists make of the same client? What do clients make of different therapists and therapy? How are counsellors and counselling best identified in a postmodern era? What are we to make of ourselves, and each other?

Probing beneath contemporary cliches about 'personal development', this interdisciplinary text integrates personal, social and 'transpersonal' dimensions of identity formation and frustration. It weaves psychological, sociological and philosophical authors in scholarly, erudite, yet highly accessible, almost conversational style, and examines the very identity of counselling. Is it a treatment of people? Or a way of treating people?

About the Author

Alex Howard has over thirty years of experience, as tutor, mentor and manager, in liberal adult education, including work with socially excluded groups and individuals. This, his sixth book, draws both from practical experience and scholarly research into the influences that shape and stunt our humanity.