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Graham Music has not been sitting still during COVID - something he will admit he finds difficult at the best of times. He has been creatively integrating established and new ideas, based on current research to write about what works in psychotherapy, and why. Additionally, he has produced a new and striking metaphor to help us think about ourselves, our relationships, and our clients. I will return to the metaphor later, but I want first to highlight the author’s bravery in writing this book.
Music's writing confronts us with painful and difficult aspects of being human. He doesn't shy away from facing pain and distress in others, and he is remarkably honest about his own struggles - an honesty which I hugely respect. He shares excruciating experiences of being bullied at school, and his consequent shut-down as a coping mechanism. For anyone who was ‘sent away to boarding school’ (as I was) the feelings of being alone and having to cope, at whatever personal cost, will be familiar.
When Music writes, he speaks to you, to me, to all of us. His personal style, combined with extensive knowledge from a vast amount of reading (‘a book a day’ in adolescence - a necessary emotional defence but a very productive one!), gives this book both depth and richness.
More unusual than even his openness is Music’s hopefulness. The ‘sparking’ metaphor, I think, works brilliantly: ‘We need to respark to recover from numbing, lifelessness, dulling, and deadening - from desparked or, worse, unsparked (never sparked), states’ (Chapter 2, p. 18) in those who have shut down as a result of prolonged trauma or neglect, and the ‘milder desparking coping mechanisms that most of us at times resort to’ (Chapter 2, p. 18). The metaphor is a thread that runs throughout the book, and as Music writes in inspirational detail about his psychotherapeutic work with a range of clients (in their familiar yet unique distress), we appreciate the richness that it provides. You don't have to be an engineer for