Mirror Crack'd

Revised edition. This title is as a wake-up call to take seriously the climate in which mental health professionals practice in which complaints and civil actions against psychotherapists and counsellors are on the increase and to sharpen assessment skills accordingly. It is also designed to help professionals to think about the "therapeutic frame" and what can happen to both the practitioner and the client when it is broken and finally to give voice to some colleagues who have been involved in the area of complaints in the hope that you and the organisations under whose codes of ethics you practice will take more of an interest in making those codes and frameworks more relevant to the intricacies of the therapeutic relationship. The message is simple: injuries that happen in relationships need to be addressed in relationships. Preface -- The mirror crack’d -- The therapeutic frame: “Good fences make good neighbours” (Robert Frost) -- Assessment and risk-management -- Love and hate in the in-between -- Working through an impasse -- Where there’s smoke there’s fire -- The courage to be human: A humanistic approach to conflict resolution -- “Everything’s fine here”—or is it? A mirror on our training institutions -- Intimacy, risk, and reciprocity in psychotherapy: Intricate ethical challenges -- Appendix