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Wyn Bramley came from a background of psychosocial nursing at the Cassel Hospital to train as a group analyst during the 1970s. She now practises and supervises psychodynamic psychotherapy, both privately and within various NHS settings in Oxford. These two books were published last year, and would seem, between them, to offer an account of her own style of working with patients and with supervisees. The emphasis throughout is on work with individuals: group and couple work is not directly covered.
There is much to applaud in these books, which demonstrate a humane, professional and considered approach to the many kinds of patients and therapy situations which may present to the Broad Spectrum Psychotherapist. This therapist is characterised as one who is working in settings like GP surgeries, hospitals or day-centres, church or voluntary services, or in private practice. Such a therapist is offering a psychodynamic approach in short- or medium-term work, but may have little control over the kinds of patients she is asked to treat, and may often be functioning as what Bramley likes to call a ‘GP to the Mind’. This work is contrasted, perhaps somewhat defensively, with the more specialised long-term work of the analyst in private practice.
The strength of Bramley's approach is in her careful emphasis on the assessment