Overview

Using Spirituality in Psychotherapy: The Heart Led Approach to Clinical Practice offers a means for therapists to integrate a spiritual perspective into their clinical practice. The book provides a valuable alternative to traditional forms of psychotherapy by placing an emphasis on purpose and meaning. Introducing a new spiritually-informed model, Heart Led Psychotherapy (HLP), the book uses a BioPsychoSocialSpiritual approach to treat psychological distress. When clients experience challenges, trauma or attachment difficulties, this can create blocks and restrictions which result in repeated patterns of behaviours and subsequent psychological distress. Based on the premise that everyone is on an individual life journey, HLP teaches clients to become an observer, identifying the life lesson that they are being asked to understand or experience. The model can be used whether a client has spiritual beliefs or not, enabling them to make new choices that are in keeping with their authentic selves, and to live a more fulfilled and peaceful life. Illustrated by case studies to highlight key points, and including a range of practical resource exercises and strategies, this engaging book will have wide appeal to therapists and clinicians from a variety of backgrounds.

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9780367141356

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Reviews

Curiously, despite far-reaching social changes in both the mainstream culture and within psychoanalysis, the tendency to deploy bisexuality in psychoanalytic texts in ways that perpetuate gender binaries and obliterate bisexual desires persists. Esther's book is refreshing in that it pointedly critiques this erasure and firmly inscribes bisexuality as an identity and practice into our clinical theory. Her cogent theoretical formulations and vivid clinical examples make it clear that psychoanalysis has not succeeded in theorizing bisexuals out of existence. --Lynne Layton, Harvard Medical School, Past Editor, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Rapoport eloquently asks us to consider the centrality of bisexuality to our theoretical knowledges - and lived experiences - of the sexual, the erotic, the intimate. Long misunderstood as a phase, an aberration and even a perversity within queerness itself, bisexuality is both a potential out of which narrower experiences of sexuality and gender are conditioned and a particular form desire can take. What kind of healing may occur if we recognize a bi-erotic subjectivity? Desiring will transform how we understand not just bisexuality but sex, sexuality, and gender. --Jonathan Alexander, Chancellor's Professor of English and of Gender & Sexuality, UC, Irvine In this compelling book Dr. Rapoport addresses the complicated meeting point between sex, gender, identity and subjectivity within psychoanalysis through the question of Bisexuality. Using bisexuality as a subjectivity, a vantage point and signifier for unknowability, the book offers an important critique of identitarian approaches to sexuality while also insisting on a discourse of bisexuality that accounts for its subjective experience and representation. Drawing on psychoanalytic, queer and social theories, Rapoport places bisexuality at the centre of interdisciplinary discussion in ways that widen its clinical and theoretical scope without settling its meaning. --Oren Gozlan, Psy.D., ABPP, Author, Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Perspective

This is an excellent book introducing a new spiritually informed Heart Led Psychotherapy which integrates solid trauma healing with a spiritual based perspective of soul awareness and life lessons. Alexandra Dent explains the evolving role of the therapist as a guide into the deeper wounds of the heart and soul with a clear step-by-step protocol which is used as part of a BioPsychoSocialSpiritual model to understanding life challenges and traumas. In particular, she illustrates how Heart Led Psychotherapy can be used in conjunction with EMDR, enabling multi-dimensional healing. A must read for therapists and clients alike interested in the expanding context of psychotherapy. Irene R. Siegel, Ph.D., LCSW; approved EMDR consultant; author, The Sacred Path of the Therapist: Modern Healing, Ancient Wisdom, and Client Transformation

This is an excellent book introducing a new spiritually informed Heart Led Psychotherapy which integrates solid trauma healing with a spiritual based perspective of soul awareness and life lessons. Alexandra Dent explains the evolving role of the therapist as a guide into the deeper wounds of the heart and soul with a clear step-by-step protocol which is used as part of a BioPsychoSocialSpiritual model to understand life challenges and traumas. In particular, she illustrates how Heart Led Psychotherapy can be used in conjunction with EMDR, enabling multi-dimensional healing. A must read for therapists and clients alike interested in the expanding context of psychotherapy. Irene R. Siegel, Ph.D., LCSW; approved EMDR consultant; author, The Sacred Path of the Therapist: Modern Healing, Ancient Wisdom, and Client Transformation Heart Led Psychotherapy (HLP) helps clients go beyond the limitations of their ego into the greener pastures of their heart and soul. This model recognises a broader perspective of life in that life is always presenting opportunities and challenges to help us connect more deeply to our authentic core. Life will inevitably present lessons that are there to help us grow. All challenging experiences, relationships, or traumas are opportunities to experience these lessons. Also, choices made from the heart lead to better outcomes than choices made from the head or ego. Sometimes such choices will require a releasing of the old and a leap of faith into the new. Making such a choice will always lead to a more authentic life. Alexandra's inclusion of the spiritual dimension in the HLP model is probably a much welcome breath of fresh air for any therapist wishing to include the spiritual dimension in their therapeutic work. Steve Nobel, author, spiritual coach and creator of The Soul Matrix healing system

Author Information

Dr Alexandra Dent is a Registered and Chartered Clinical Psychologist working with individuals across the age span in Independent Practice in the East Midlands, UK. Areas of interest include trauma, attachment, mindfulness, and spirituality. Alexandra is an active member of the EMDR community and is a Europe Accredited EMDR Child and Adolescent Consultant, EMDR Consultant and Training Facilitator.

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