The Client Who Changed Me: Stories of Therapist Personal Transformation

by Kottler; Jeffrey A

• ISBN13: 9780415951081
• ISBN10: 0415951089
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Although the impact that clients can have on therapists is well-known, most work on the subject consists of dire warnings: mental health professionals are taught early on to be on their guard for burnout, compassion fatigue, and countertransference. However, while these professional hazards are very real, the scholarly focus on the negative potential of the client-counselor relationship often implies that no good can come of allowing oneself to get too close to a client's issues. This sentiment obscures what every therapist knows to be true: that the client-counselor relationship can also effect powerful positive transformations in a therapist's own life. How Clients Transform Their Therapistsis Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson's testimony to the significant and often life-changing ways in which therapists have been changed by their patients. Kottler and Carlson draw not only upon their own extensive experience-between them, they have more than fifty years in the field-but also upon lengthyinterviews with dozens of the country's foremost therapists and theorists. This novel work will present readers with a truly unique perspective on the business of therapy: not merely how it appears externally, but how practitioners experience it internally. Although these stories paint a complex and multi-layered portrait of the client-counselor relationship, they all demonstrate the profound and unexpected rewards that the profession has to offer.

Author Biography

Jon Carlson is distinguished professor of psychology and counseling at Governors State University, University Park, Illinois.

Table of Contents

About the Authors	vii
From Clay to Fire: A Mythological Tale	1	(8)
Jeffrey A. Kottler: About Last Night	9	(8)
Jon Carlson: Self-Surgery to Remove the Transponder	17	(12)
Violet Oaklander: The Kitten That Roared	29	(10)
Frank Pittman: An Affair with an Alien	39	(10)
Robert Neimeyer: Using Metaphors to Thaw a Frozen Woman	49	(6)
Alan Marlatt: A New Name	55	(10)
Albert Ellis: Learning from a Difficult Customer	65	(6)
Bradford Keeney: A Family of Pirates	71	(14)
John Gray: Little Things Make a Big Difference	85	(6)
Steven Lankton: Clients Tune Me Up	91	(10)
David E. Scharff: The Patient Who Taught Me to Be a Therapist	101	(10)
Pat Love: The Broken Heart	111	(8)
Laura Brown: A Spiritual Awakening	119	(4)
Ken Hardy: Mister Black Doctor	123	(6)
Michael Yapko: Caught in a Controversy	129	(10)
John Murphy: A Language of Shrugs	139	(8)
John Krumboltz: The Story of the Sun and the Wind	147	(6)
Paul Pedersen: A Lesson in Humility	153	(8)
Lenore Walker: Finding Justice with a Sledgehammer	161	(8)
Barry Duncan: When Courage Is Enough	169	(10)
Leigh McCullough: The Lady Cloaked in Fog	179	(6)
Patricia Arredondo: The Client Who Inspired Her Therapist	185	(6)
Howard Kirschenbaum: A Flood of Feeling	191	(8)
How Clients Change Their Therapists	199	(18)
About the Contributors	217	(4)
References	221