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How does one develop a truly rich and rewarding career in psychotherapy? How can we put a secure structure in place? How can we develop our skills and capacities and intelligence? How can we conquer our creative inhibitions? How can we derive delight from such painful work? (p. xiii)
Ultimately, how can we flourish in our profession rather than merely survive? Brett Kahr's new book answers all these most important questions and many more.
Generously drawing on his personal experience in the mental health field that spans four decades, Kahr offers an inspiring account of his own professional journey and paints a realistic portrait of what it means to work and thrive in this rewarding, demanding, and complex profession.
Kahr takes us through each and every step in the life cycle of a psychotherapist, from the earliest stages of assessing one's suitability to train, through to the later stages of preparing for retirement and beyond, providing plenty of practical advice and, most importantly, demonstrating through his own example how to flourish truly in this professional field.
The first part of the book explores how to build a secure base as the firm foundation on which subsequent success can be based. In assessing one's suitability and readiness to train, Kahr uses the metaphor of a sufficiently sensitive skin and a sufficiently sturdy spine to explain that the ideal candidate must combine compassion and sensitivity with a capacity to be firm and robust when required. To use his own words: “a career in psychotherapy is certainly not for the faint of heart” (p. 11). Other seminal qualities are identified, such as empathy, intelligence, and, most importantly, reliability, referring to Winnicott who once described the essence of psychological work as “reliability meeting dependence” (p. 12). He argues that these qualities, together with the courage to work through personal vulnerabilities, coupled with a willingness to develop a firm theoretical base, are indispensible attr