Cura Te Ipsum

An updated revision of Jeffrey Kottler's classic book On Being a Therapist reveals the new realities and inner experiences of therapeutic practice today.

This book is based on real-life counselling sessions with various clients who were suffering with low mood or depression. The book shows a scripted conversation between counsellor and client over five counselling sessions. There are also counsellor notes throughout each session to help the listener understand why the counsellor asked particular questions or responded in a certain way. The therapy used is called "Solution-Focused Therapy". It is a brief therapy that is designed to focus on the resources of the client.

Exposing the many lies told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives listeners a tantalizing, almost illicit glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing, and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves listeners with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.

Research suggests that the presence of the therapist, and how the therapist truly forges a connection with the client in therapy, are the most crucial factors affecting the client’s healing process. An engaged, committed, caring therapist who is mindful of his or her own self - and how that self relates to the client - is the key determinant of how well that client will respond to therapy.

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM is a somatically based psychotherapy that helps bring into awareness the parts of self that are disorganized and dysfunctional.