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Neville Symington brings intense personal conviction to this volume on the training and maturation of a psychological healer and the professional dilemmas facing the field of psychotherapy today. A distillation from eight years of lectures for psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, mostly in Australia and New Zealand, the book represents Symington's efforts to integrate disparate theories of the mind and technique garnered in study, teaching, and practice in Britain and in Australia.
This is no small task. Central to the dialectic of his discussions are the tensions of opposing theories and points of view rigidly held. For example he points to the tabula rasa theory of personality, created by environment acting upon the innocent, whose reactions form core character patterns—a theory in which he was well and deeply indoctrinated in his English training. He then alludes to the opposite proposition— responsiveness to and creation of environment by psychic actions—which he has deeply digested in Australia, where he now lives and works. In the face of such examples, Symington, from wide mastery of the writings of psychoanalysis, religion, literature, and philosophy, and much clinical experience, invariably concludes that both static theoretical positions are incorrect. He critiques the logical conclusions and behavioral and emotional sequelae of these stances and, then, presents his