Coming to life / Leston Havens.

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Contents -- Introduction -- Imagery -- 1. The Eye of the Beholder -- 2. A Shy Acceptance -- 3. Failure and Tragedy -- 4. Some Gestures -- Possession -- 5. Whose Am I? -- 6. A Possessor -- 7. The Struggle for Existence -- The Real -- 8. The Naked -- 9. Self-Deception -- 10. A Death -- 11. A Birth -- Postscript

The author postulates that we are all captives of the images we carry with us. Psychotherapy seeks to free the captive from labels and crippling assumptions, and Havens views this process through the lenses of literature, art and psychiatry. His reflections are enlivened by clinical portraits. 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.

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