Routledge The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy: Spiritual Practice, the Apophatic Way and Bion

2020 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis (ABAPsa) book award winner! If, when a patient enters therapy, there is an underlying yearning to discover a deeper sense of meaning or purpose, how might a therapist rise to such a challenge? As both Carl Jung and Wilfred Bion observed, the patient may be seeking something that has a spiritual as well as psychotherapeutic dimension. Presented in two parts, The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy is a profound inquiry into the contemplative, mystical and apophatic dimensions of psychoanalysis. What are some of the qualities that may inspire processes of growth, healing and transformation in a patient? Part One, The Listening Cure: Psychotherapy as Spiritual Practice, considers the confluence between psychotherapy, spirituality, mysticism, meditation and contemplation. The book explores qualities such as presence, awareness, attention, mindfulness, calm abiding, reverie, patience, compassion, insight and wisdom, as well as showing how they may be enhanced by meditative and spiritual practice. Part Two, A Ray of Divine Darkness: Psychotherapy and the Apophatic Way, explores the relevance of apophatic mysticism to psychoanalysis, particularly showing its inspiration through the work of Wilfred Bion. Paradoxically using language to unsay itself, the apophatic points towards absolute reality as ineffable and unnameable. So too, Bion observed, psychoanalysis requires the ability to dwell in mystery awaiting intimations of ultimate truth, O, which cannot be known, only realised. Pickering reflects on the works of key apophatic mystics including Dionysius, Meister Eckhart and St John of the Cross; Buddhist teachings on meditation; Śūnyatā and Dzogchen; and Lévinas’ ethics of alterity. The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy will be of great interest to both trainees and accomplished practitioners in psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychotherapy and counselling, as well as scholars of religious studies, those in religious orders, spiritual directors, priests and meditation teachers. Review "Early in her book Judith writes of her own experience of singing: Ultimately, inspired by the spirit of the music, all elements of attention converge and unify, the singer enters a state of ecstasy transcending awareness of time, space and individuality, such that the music and singers become all one instrument, one soaring, flowing body of sound. In this scholarly book Judith brings us, her patients and herself on a deeply personal journey in the search for meaning in psychotherapy. Her exploration of Dzogchen, Buddhism and apophatic mysticism from a range of traditions culminates in an original re-interpretation of Bion’s "O". Her writing sings to the "ray of divine darkness": the transcendence of not knowing over knowledge in psychotherapy."-Penelope Jools, Senior Editor, Working with Developmental Anxieties in Couple and Family Psychotherapy: The Family Within (Routledge, 2018) "Dr Judith Pickering offers invaluable insights and guidelines into a richer understanding of the human spirit, showing a path to unity out of false divisions and bringing much needed compassion and gentleness of spirit into a fast-paced, acquisitive and often aggressive world. She does so by drawing on the wisdom of many apophatic mystics from different spiritual traditions as well as her own vast experience in contemplation, meditation, and psychotherapy."-Bishop Patrick Power, author of Joy and Hope, Pilgrim Priest and Bishop "In this immensely evocative, provocative and scholarly book, Judith Pickering challenges the reader to consider the daunting role of the psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and couple psychotherapist in relating to their patients – mind and soul – in discovering the truth of who they are. In her engaging writing style, which conveys her aliveness and analytic hospitality, she emphasises the spiritual dimension of psychoanalysis, noting the importance of a particular st