Zen and the art of improvisational therapy

At some point in my life, I read or heard someone say that the key to improvisation is rehearsal. This, I opined, was idiocy. I mean seriously, improvisation is making it up as you go along, right? Well how the hell do you make something up as you go along when you’ve already rehearsed it? [...]

Read Full Post »

I am the sound of a tree falling in the forest

Once upon a time, I was a philosophy student. Now I might be somewhat biased, but in my opinion, a philosophical training is an optimum preparation for psychotherapy training. This is no surprise when you consider that philosophy originally arose as an expression of humanity’s need to answer exactly the kinds of Big Questions that [...]

Read Full Post »

Outcome vs process: The Staff-Tow Uncertainty Principle

I’ve been blogging away for about six months now, and have decided that it’s high time I named a principle after myself as my enduring contribution to psychotherapy. I’m not entirely sure how I arrived at what I arrived at (which, as you’ll see, is a rather neat case in point) but it was fun [...]

Read Full Post »

Frozen face syndrome

Update (18th September 2011): I’ve noticed that this post gets a regular number of visits from people doing web searches that feature ‘frozen face’ as a search term. If you have reached this post in this way, I would be interested in your reaction to what you read here, and how (if at all) it [...]

Read Full Post »