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This short book was conceived, written, edited and illustrated by the Symington family, Neville and Joan Symington, both practising psychoanalysts, and their two sons. Neville Symington's text is very well illustrated by his wife's graphic cartoons.
There are six chapters, closing with a short glossary of psychological treatments and preceded by an introduction. Neville Symington states that the
book has been written for patients. This could apply either to someone looking for a psychotherapist or someone already in therapy but for whom the therapy is not working. He explains that the Western world has seen a huge growth in the number of counselling and psychotherapy trainings, and that practitioners abound, within a culture that anticipates and expects the meeting of individual emotional needs. Psychotherapy and counselling serve a population which, unless guided, may not know where to look for, or how to discern, a good practitioner and, unfortunately, standards of training are very variable.
The book is written in simple jargon-free language that will easily be related to by the layman, but which also conveys the seriousness with which Neville Symington approaches his subject.
At the beginning of the first chapter, entitled ‘The purpose of psychotherapy’, he states clearly that the aim of psychotherapy ‘is to cure sickness of the mind’ (p. 3). This, to my mind, helpfully sets the practice of psychotherapy within a context which differentiates it from a talk with a friend and separates ‘something quite mild’ (p. 4) from
the something that may be more serious: A patient may be suddenly overcome by a deep and terrifying sadness which has no apparent cause. … The person finds he cannot think properly, cannot remember things or finds that he has forgotten how to drive. … Something like an explosion has gone off inside him and all he knows is the effects. (pp. 4-5)
Reading these words, perhaps as someone suffering in this way and looking for help, I would feel taken serio