Coming to Life: Reflections on the Art of Psychotherapy

To penetrate the opaque, to lift the weight and let the self escape its frozen image - this is the essence of psychotherapy. In these portraits of patients at odds with themselves, Leston Havens takes us through the wonders and rigours of psychological healing and shows us what it really means in immediate, human terms, to come to life. We are all captives of the images we carry with us - and those we inspire - and therapy seeks to expose the relation of these images to a deeper psychological life, to free the captive from labels and crippling assumptions. Havens views this process through the multiple lenses of literature, art, and psychiatry. In these clinical portraits, we encounter ordinary people struggling with the trials of their own existence: marriage and divorce, sexual identity and fulfilment, illness and death. We meet a woman imprisoned by eager responses to her beauty and helpfulness, a proud lawyer in thrall to conventional expectations, a dying man becoming more and more alive as he approaches death. Through these personal stories, Havens explores the meaning of psychological health - how it can be recognized through the filter of images and ideas, protected from their distorting power, and encouraged to flourish.