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Although this is ostensibly a book about counselling elderly people, there is much here for psychotherapists working with people aged 60-90 plus in a range of settings. It would be useful for therapists working in a GP practice, in institutional settings such as a nursing homes or hospitals, or offering once-weekly work to older patients within the context of their private practice.
The author is an analytical psychotherapist who has written books on psychotherapy with older people and on attitudes to death and dying. This book draws on her experience of setting up a counselling service for older people in her local area. It explores what it is like to be old and how we can creatively be of help to people who have lived longer than ourselves. The reader is alerted to the hazards, obstacles and challenges involved in engaging with elderly people for whom the idea of counselling or psychotherapy is unfamiliar and possibly alien. Each chapter concludes with questions for reflection and discussion, making it a useful handbook for anyone interested in setting up similar local counselling services for older people, for those offering specialist training for counsellors and psychotherapists for such work and for their supervisors.
As an experienced tutor on a counselling course with an integrative theoretical perspective Orbach offers what she describes as an ‘easy eclecticism’. Her own approach is firmly underpinned by the discipline of her primarily Jungian psychodynamic framework, but she also includes and illustrates approaches which draw on object relations theory, attachment theory, humanistic approaches and some cognitive-behavioural techniques. Inevitably, in a slim volume, theory is touched upon rather than expounded, making this a suitable book for therapists already theoretically well grounded; beginners would need to acquire more detailed theoretical grounding alongside the specialist focus offered here. Orbach's concern is that workers should draw creatively and