Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality edited by Nathan Field. Lecturers: Rosemary Gordon, David M. Black, Kenneth Wright, Nathan Field, Ronald Britton, Andrew Samuels, Donald Meltzer, Chris MacKenna, Josephine Klein and Karen Armstrong. Published by  Karnac Books, London, 2005;  193 pp; £19.99.

The lectures were given in 2002 at the London Centre for Psychotherapy, in an exceptionally popular series devised by the book's editor, Nathan Field. In his Introduction Field describes the enthusiasm that greeted the series:

Within a few weeks of their announcement nearly every seat was sold out for the whole year. No doubt the audience were attracted by the reputation of the speakers on the programme; but even more interesting was the degree of interest that the linking of psychotherapy and spirituality aroused in the counselling and psychotherapy community.

For the practising psychotherapist, the challenge of the area loosely indicated by the word ‘spirituality’ is never far from the daily experience of the consulting room. It makes its presence felt, obliquely but inevitably, in many aspects of the encounter, though historically the traditions of psychoanalytic thinking have offered little acknowledgement of this aspect of human experience. Reasons for such avoidance are not hard to find: at one extreme, we encounter the ‘born again’ patient for whom God is a deeply entrenched superego, reinforcing resistance and anti-libidinal paranoia; at the other, we find the nun practising as therapist who feels unable to wear about her person any object that could be interpreted as a symbol of her religious commitment. The consulting room is kept clear of obvious symbols, allowing for any experience that could be defined as ‘spiritual’ to emerge uncontaminated within the encounter itself. But then, if authentic experience of this order does arise, how and in what language can it be addressed? A safe reference point, if one is needed, is to stay with the mother and baby dyad, but there are times when a ‘holding’ interpretation of this order does not reflect the authentic feel of the session. On the other hand, if we look for a way into such experiences that is not reductive, we soon find ourselves in a place of no words or reference points from which to speak, even among our