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I am still not sure, after re-reading it, for whom this book was written. Having seen it reviewed in the week-end papers, I was pleased to know that ideas about psychotherapy by a practitioner were reaching a wider audience - but also apprehensive about ‘the secrets of the consulting room’ being shared with this audience.
I find that my ambivalence persists. The book was originally self-published, and brought to the attention of the publishing world by the judges of the PEN/Ackerley Prize. The somewhat eulogistic Preface by the author's friend, Hilary Mantel, describes her as ‘a fellow-practitioner in the art of narrative’ (p. xii), which gives the book a literary endorsement; and states that ‘anyone who comes to her book with an open mind and heart will see that the practice of psychotherapy she describes here is open, flexible and humanistic’ (p. xx).
This answers the further question of what this book, divided into several parts, is about. It is about the profession of psychotherapy: the author's experience of having it, then of practising it, and then of her patients' experience of having it. The final section describes the harrowing experience of her son-in-law's murder by racists: one senses that Jane Haynes wanted to