Institutes and How to Survive Them

From the accounts provided here of crucial milestones in the development of Britain's therapeutic resources, a coherent philosophy emerges about the working lives of mental health professionals that will be of wide general interest. Skynner describes how people are drawn to vocations in the helping professions - as they frequently are to their partners - by deeply felt motives and needs of which they are sometimes unaware, such as to complete some unfinished business of their own. He shows this unseen connection between those who seek help and those who offer it to be the source of much that is beneficial, but only if practitioners can acknowledge their own nature and needs and allow themselves to gain self-knowledge at the same time as their clients. Relying on psychotherapy as a form of self-help for both client and therapist, the approach rests on the readiness of therapists to put themselves into the therapeutic equation to change and grow at the same time as those they treat. The training, supervision and consultation programmes described in "Institutions and How to Survive Them" rest on this principle.
From an examination of existing facilities for the teaching, professional support and personal development of mental health professionals, the papers go on to offer a searching and original examination of questions about stability and change amongst people and their social institutions. Collected, they will be relevant for all concerned with the mangement of change, particularly teachers and trainers in psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, education, industrial relations and all kinds of pastoral care.