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Conversing With Uncertainty

Practicing Psychotherapy in A Hospital Setting

  • Price: $40.00 $36.00
  • Hardback: 160 pages
  • Published: September 1992
  • ISBN: 978-0-88163-148-7
  • Publisher: Routledge

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Series: Relational Perspectives Book Series.

Conversing with Uncertainty is a unique chronicle of why therapists must use theory while resisting the allure of theory, maintaining a double vision that allows them to appropriate theory only to break it open to enlarge the interactive and interpretive possibilities of therapy. But McCleary offers far more than a vivid experiential rendering of this insight. She argues persuasively, here in conversation with the writings of Irwin Hoffman and Lawrence Friedman, that a narrative case study - such as her case study of Kay - offers a unique window to comprehending the type of reflection that culminates in psychotherapeutic knowing. It follows, for McCleary, that case narratives are especially relevant to psychotherapeutic training, and by implication, to the way in which therapists acquire expertise.

Framed by a foreword by Stephen Mitchell and an afterword by Glen Gabbard, Conversing with Uncertainty is the premier volume of the Relational Perspectives Book Series. It also introduces a gifted writer of rare therapeutic sensibility. For it is McCleary's achievement, finally, not merely to convey with arresting candor the stress and uncertainty of clinical training, but to use her encounter with Kay to probe with fresh insight perennial questions about the narrative structure of therapeutic knowledge, the experiential foundations of theory choice, and the use and abuse of theory in clinical practice.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Mitchell 1. First Words 2. Noisy Words 3. Conflicting Words 4. Magic Words 5. Shared Words 6. Conversation Afterword, Gabbard

Reviews

"This struggle of a beginning psychotherapist is reminiscent of the first chapter of Robert Coles's The Call of Stories (1990) wherein he speaks of his efforts to use theory to deal with his own uncertainties and the conflicting views he received about patients from his supervisors. . . . McCleary's thoughtful dialogue with theories gives them more stature than was granted by Coles. Her book will be useful, enjoyable reading both for beginning psychotherapists and for their teachers and supervisors."

- Stuart Averill, M.D., Contemporary Psychology

Author Biography

Rita Wiley McCleary, Psy.D., holds Master's Degrees in Philosophy (York University) and Ideas and Methods (University of Chicago), and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (Chicago School of Professional Psychology). She is currently Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, and is in private practice in New Haven.