SIGN IN YOUR ACCOUNT TO HAVE ACCESS TO DIFFERENT FEATURES

CREATE AN ACCOUNT FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?

FORGOT YOUR DETAILS?

AAH, WAIT, I REMEMBER NOW!

CREATE ACCOUNT

ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT?

IAHIP

CALL: +353 (0)1 284 1665
  • Contact Us
  • Classifieds
    • Publications
    • Services
    • Training
    • All Ads
    • Submit Ad
  • News
    • IAHIP News
    • Blog
  • Members
    • AGM 2020 & 2019
    • Events Calendar
    • Professional Conduct
    • Continued Professional Development -CPD- For Accredited Psychotherapists
    • Accreditation
    • Re-accreditation
    • Supervision
    • Honorary Membership
    • Child and Adolescent
    • Garda Vetting
    • Resources
      • Members’ Resources
    • Payments
  • SIGN UP
  • LOGIN
  • Home
  • About
    • About IAHIP
    • Governing Body
    • Committees
      • Committees
      • Regional Development
    • Complaints
    • Constitutional Documents
      • Articles of Association
      • Bye-Laws of the Association
    • IAHIP in N.I.
    • Considering a career in psychotherapy?
  • Psychotherapy
    • About Psychotherapy
    • How Psychotherapy Can Help Me
    • Choosing a Psychotherapist
    • Useful Links
  • Join
    • Join IAHIP
    • Why Join IAHIP?
    • Benefits of Membership of IAHIP
    • Categories of Membership
    • Fees
  • Publications
    • Inside Out
    • Subscribe
    • Buy Back Issues
    • Buy Full Page Ad
    • Buy Half Page Ad
    • Advertising
  • Training
    • Recognised Training Courses IAHIP
    • European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP)
  • Find a Therapist
  • Home
  • Inside Out
  • Issue 18: Autumn 1994
  • BOOK REVIEW: The Art of the Obvious.

BOOK REVIEW: The Art of the Obvious.

Developing Insight for Psychotherapy and Everyday Life.

Bruno Bettelheim and Alvin A. Rosenfeld. Thames & Hudson £16.95.

In 1977 Bruno Bettelheim was asked by the psychiatrist, Alvin Rosenfeld, to join him in conducting seminars for trainee psychotherapists at Stanford University. These were to continue for the next six years and became so popular that they attracted established psychotherapists as well as trainees. From more than one hundred tran­scripts extensively reworked and edited, the authors produced five representative sessions in which they and the participants address a variety of issues: building a patient’s trust, finding empathy for a violent, destructive child, treating the elderly, avoiding preconceptions and prejudices about a client which might impede therapy, treating the elderly and assessing the achievements and limitations of a psycho­therapeutic approach.

At the beginning of the seminars, the selected therapist presented the particular problem he or she was encountering. Bettelheim and Rosenfeld would listen care­fully and would then proceed to dismantle the therapist’s prejudices and preconcep­tions, challenging them at every turn (often to the irritation of the therapist) eventually turning the problem on its head and throwing a whole new light on its construction. Forty pages are devoted to each case history. This allows for an intriguing and valuable unravelling of the complexities in the case and of the people involved – the clients, the observers, (in some cases) the researchers, the families, the therapist – all caught up in their own belief systems, their own values and their own prejudices.

Most psychotherapists who attended these seminars were later to admit that Bettelheim had had a profound influence on their professional careers and had, in some cases, changed the direction of their lives. He liked confrontation. ‘When I teach psychoanalytic thinking’ he wrote, ‘I go out of my way to be difficult for the first few sessions, so that on the average fifteen to twenty percent of the students leave the class. I’m convinced that they are better off and that I am better off too. It entails considerable personal hardships to become a psychoanalyst, and you’re better off not to go into the field if you can’t deal with them.’

This is Bettelheim’s last book. He died, by his own hand, in 1990, aged eighty-six. He was a controversial figure, famous for his treatment of autism. He disliked the behavioural approach to therapy and was never afraid to admit that even the most skilled therapists had their limits in what they could achieve. There is a compass­ionate and excellent account of his life at the beginning of the book written by Alvin Rosenfeld.

This book is a practical and useful exploration of psychotherapy, that alchemy of intuition and technique that Bettleheim called ‘the art of the obvious’.

Mavis Arnold

Search Inside Out

Latest from the Blog

Latest News

  • New Trends and Opportunities for Psychotherapy as a Profession – Online Workshop
  • Empathy Counselling & Psychotherapy – Rooms to Rent in Portlaoise

Upcoming Events

Contact Us

The Administrator,
The Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy Ltd.
40 Northumberland Avenue,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co. Dublin

Telephone: +353 (0)1 284 1665
Email: admin@iahip.org

Office Hours

9.30am – 4.00pm Monday
9.30am – 5.00pm Tuesday to Friday

Telephone Line Answered
Monday – Friday 9.30am – 1.00pm.

Disclaimer

IAHIP Ltd. cannot be held liable for the services, products or information contained in ads posted on this website.

FIND A THERAPIST

Search in radius 0 miles
  • Contact Details
  • Privacy Statement
  • Code of Ethics for Psychotherapists
  • Company Registration

© 2018 All rights reserved.

TOP
This website uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience. Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.