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It seemed a curious brief to review these titles, both of which are (co-)authored by Tavistock Relationships (TR)-trained colleagues and addressed to clients. A cartoon floated into my mind: a therapist leaning forward to get a better view of a book sticking out of her client's bag, the thought bubble reading: “Is that a self-help book?” Next surfaced thoughts of clients bringing into sessions and colleagues into supervision all kinds of “self-help” or “self-care” communications, with a noticeable uptick in the turn to mental health themed apps and podcasts since the pandemic. If these are familiar glimpses of the therapist's efforts to engage with (unconscious) communication around “self-help” and “self-care” in client material, the thought of reviewing these books seemed at first disorienting. It was only when the question of their relationship to the “TR model” came into focus that I could make the connection between reading and reviewing them.
Indeed, TR's model of working with couples informs both books: the focus on the relationship and on couple dynamics, including sexual relating, and the attention to difficulties around communication, boundaries, and conflict. They include clinical vignettes and demonstrate a capacity to think about relationship dynamics.
Yet in their stated aims as well as authorial voices, these books diverge and make for very different reading experiences. In Matt and Sarah Davies' words, theirs is “[a] practical and useful handbook to all couples in every kind of relationship” (p. 5), providing a set of “building blocks and tools” as well as “exercises to help practice and embody” (p. 6). By contrast, Joanna Harrison makes clear that she is not offering “a manual full of advice”, but rather “a set of extra
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lenses for increasing understanding of yourselves and each other, and of what the hard work of relating to each other better might involve” (p. 9). Even allowing for the comparatively