Learning from Our Mistakes Difficulties and Failures in Feminist Therapy

Learning from Our Mistakes: Difficulties and Failures in Feminist Therapy brings readers face-to-face with classically difficult cases in therapy and shows how therapists use various treatments to deal with certain challenges. Providing illustrative stories of failures and near-failures, the authors are honest in their assessment of their treatment mistakes. Enlightening examples include erotic transference and near stalking of a therapist, the angry client, therapy sessions with non-English speaking participants, and therapy with an inner-city African American school girl with a very unsuitable homelife.

If you’re a long-time veteran of feminist therapy or someone just starting out, you’ll find a helpful, reliable list of “dos” and “don’ts” in Learning from Our Mistakes: Difficulties and Failures in Feminist Therapy. Frank and honest in tone, makeup, and style, this one-of-a-kind publication looks at the failures and roadblocks that have hampered feminist therapists in the past so you can learn from their misfortunes and avoid them in your own professional endeavors. In Learning from Our Mistakes, you’ll come face-to-face with classic difficult cases, and you’ll see from a feminist perspective how therapists used various treatments to deal with these seemingly insurmountable challenges. You’ll find that these and other topics will help you in navigating the difficult situations that arise in your personal practice: the pros and cons of terminating with a client who has an eroticized transference differences between therapists and clients in terms of race, ethnicity, and age problems encountered by rural therapists in small communities using a translator in therapy when the therapist and client don’t speak the same language feelings of anger in therapy many other “log jams” in the therapeutic processIt’s no mistake that Learning from Our Mistakes is full of what works and what doesn’t. In it, three veteran discussants give you the tools necessary to overcome the uncertainties and inadequacies that plague therapists. You’ll come away understanding the many ways failure is embedded in both the theory and practice of psychotherapy. Ultimately, you’ll find that mistakes are really only failure narratives waiting to be used, shaped, and turned toward the positive experiences of both client and therapist.

Contents Introduction: Concerning Failure  A Case of Eroticized Transference One Case, Many Conversations: Toward Multiplicities Self-Disclosure as an Approach for Teaching Ethical Decisionmaking Triangulated Therapy: Cross-Cultural Counseling  Managing Anxiety: The Client’s and Mine  The Client Revisited: A Second Look at a Near Failure  Where, Oh Where, Has the Therapeutic Alliance Gone?: Disquieting Log-Jams in the Therapeutic Relationship Meanings and Implications of Failure in Therapy  Index Reference Notes Included