Discussion of ‘The Way That You Say it: Poetry in Therapy’

I particularly liked the way the paper unfolded: introducing us to poetry and psychotherapy on the bookshelf, then distinguishing poetry from prose and showing how it links to our thinking in the physical brain, and on to the lovely vignette with Tom and his wooden toy and then socially created ‘good’ brain, before introducing us to her poetry and patients in her clinical work.

It has been difficult to choose which parts of the paper to pick out for discussion as there are so many areas one could start a conversation about. But here are a few:

• poetry versus prose and its relationship to neuro-science and brain functioning;

• how we say it - the paper's title. Poetic language. As psychotherapists what do we think about the way we say it, and what do we think about the language we use with patients?;

• poems as containers or working models;

• how Jane relates with her patients. The beautiful and stark contrast of her emotional and verbal connectedness to her patient's dissociation and/or verbal silence;

• Jane's way of working relationally and analytically with the children (while undercover), clearly having a very different and positive impact on them from the other people around;

• the issue of whether to share a poem (psychotherapist self-disclosure);

• the failure of therapies. What are we left with? What do we do when it feels hopeless?;