Editorial 

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” So wrote Rainer Maria Rilke. By some synchronicity many of the articles and poems in this issue share the theme of spring, new life and nature as co-therapist.

Tom Gunning, who has written a book on green therapy, writes movingly here about discovering the healing power of nature and building the Parable Garden Education Project in Wexford.

Madeleine Grant recounts a series of 12 monthly workshops which she has developed and which encouraged participants and herself to recognise “the heart’s enduring connection to nature and its cycles” and to get in touch with our ‘feeling’ side rather than our ‘doing’ side.

William Pattengill describes Slí Eile, the residential treatment centre, organic farm and bakery in Co. Cork, whose motto is ‘growing together’ and which enables people with mental health challenges to recover and rebuild their lives.

Poems by John Bourke, Áine Hutchinson and Paul Daly also reflect our relationship with nature.

Apart from this theme we have a number of articles on different aspects of therapy.

We are privileged to be able to include a memoir of her professional journey by the distinguished psychoanalyst and writer Deborah Luepnitz in which she describes the worlds of clinical psychology, family therapy, psychoanalysis, and feminism.

Marking the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, Yegor Kucherenko and Eva Sanner discuss how psychosynthesis has dealt with the challenges of the ongoing conflict.

Eoin Stephens does therapists a service by providing a hugely helpful introduction to the autistic client, in the process, exploding popular myths about the condition.

Marika Mikulak explores multilingual therapy, the importance of language and the sense of identity.

Colm O’Doherty unpacks the concept of humility in therapy - both of client and therapist - and sees the holding work of the psychotherapist in the larger perspective of an an “overarching caring presence”.

Pádraig Cotter and Paul Callery write about combining the spirit of ancient Irish storytelling with learnings from the humanistic and integrative psychotherapies and Process Oriented Psychology.

Paul Hogan investigates how male therapists’ sense of self changes in the course of taking on the role of therapist, looking at the themes or identity, therapy as a role and changing relationships.

In addition, we have Monica Haughey’s review of a workshop on gender dysphoria, Sydney Conroy’s reflections on the film Wendell & Wild and Monika Kuiter’s review of Susan Holiday’s book Hidden Wonders of the Human Heart.

IAHIP 2023 - INSIDE OUT 99 - Spring 2023