Learning from the Patient

I am a staff psychiatrist at an academic institution and I purchased this book for use in psychotherapy supervision with psychiatry residents. I am finding it is a great read for residents at all levels; practical for PGY-II's and helps III's and IV's take their therapy to a deeper level. Definitely recommended!

Patrick Casement's honesty in writing this book is an inspiration to those of us aiming to be counsellors. Not many therapists would reveal and discuss their own mistakes and oversights so openly, with a view to helping others learn from them. Casement promotes active listening skills and use of the "internal supervisor" to gain awareness both of the client's and one's own internal processes. Also key to his approach is a willingness to embrace uncertainty and not to make snap judgements, in effect to make use of what the poet John Keats called "negative capability." I highly recommend this book.

In the "pas de deux", the dance between the therapist and the patient, so much goes on it's nearly impossible to get a grip on it all and Casement does a beautiful job of describing this. So much of what he "knows" he knows in retrospect, but such is the stuff of case histories. Meanwhile, when you're together, the dance goes on! What I liked especially about this book is that he makes an attempt to be humble in the presence of his patients; an attempt anyway. If you've ever been in the helping professions, and can get your ego out of the way, that's just the way it is. You get your degree, you read and read, you have your own analysis or whatever, but what comes up in the therapy room never seems to have been covered in the text books. So you learn-as-you-go. His carefully delineated case histories take you step-by-step through the complicated process, and you will learn a lot from this book -- if nothing else you can take heart that it's a very complicated "dance" indeed. You can be taught the steps, but putting it together with your "partner" will be yours alone!

This is the single best psychotherapy book I have ever read! It teaches listening skills for things only subtley said. It presents respectful ways of understanding the psychotherapy process. A person who can really learn from the patient will automatically become a wonderful therapist, a person who cannot learn will only be a hack. Read or be a hack.

I found Casement to be fascinating in his explanation of the interaction between he and his patients. He described his thoughts and ideas in an uncomplicated manner and as a student I found this to be most helpful. After reading his book, a lot of things finally made sense to me. I strongly recommend reading this book to all clinicians as it can be used within any framework and theory