A Safe Place: Laying the Groundwork of Psychotherapy

by Leston Havens

Overview

Drawing on his rich experience within psychiatry, Leston Havens takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the vast and changing landscape of psychotherapy and psychiatry today. Closely examining the dynamics of the doctor–patient exchange, he seeks to locate and describe the elusive therapeutic environment within which psychological healing most effectively takes place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674725416
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/26/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	174
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Leston Havens was Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Hospital.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Making a Safe Place
1. MY DOCTOR
2. FREUD'S INVENTION
3. WORDS AS DEEDS
Reinventing the Interview
4. TALKING TO A STRANGER
5. RELIABLE FINDINGS
Dangerous Places
6. ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE
7. SCHIZOPHRENIA
8. PSYCHOPATHY
Today and Tomorrow
9. SULLIVAN AND THE HEART
10. THE FUTURE OF HEALING
NOTES
INDEX

Editorial Reviews

Capacious intelligence, generous spirit and quirky grace characterize this collection of essays from the author of Making Contact . Focusing on the interaction between therapist and patient, the aptly named Havens, a psychiatrist, calls for a reliably secure relationship--the safe place of the title--in which the two can approach healing change together. Often exploring issues raised by specific patients--including, among others, one who committed suicide, a schizophrenic and a psychopath--Havens introduces a powerful humanity to the case study, using his experiences of these individuals to illustrate what seemed to work, what mistakes were made, and what conclusions might cautiously be drawn. Finding value in silence and reward in surprise, he advocates that therapists balance credulity with skepticism, charging them ``to stay with the battle and feel, and not run from what must be borne.'' In fluent prose, he explicates the delicate paradoxes which comprise his field; his ideas may best be appreciated by readers familiar with psychotherapy and analysis. Paying respect to Freud and homage to Harry Stack Sullivan, Havens calls for a more humanized psychotherapy, one all the more demanding for its elusive, unquantifiable, increasingly important goals. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Havens (psychiatry, Harvard Medical Sch.) offers an updated perspective on the patient-therapist alliance (i.e., safe-place making) and a review of the professional need for constant awareness of the level of psychiatric uncertainty (i.e., clinical cognition's susceptibility to the transient mores of each decade). Influenced by Winnicott and Sullivan, Havens believes in treatment as ``protection against the world, including that part of the world represented by the therapist.'' His is a wary but steady faith in the promise of psychotherapeutic healing, with the final chapter presenting a striking and overarching vision of psychotherapy's near future. Perhaps too circumspect for the lay reader, for the noncredentialed and therapists-in-training this book is a timely and trustworthy overview of the field. For subject collections.-- William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.

Library Journal

With considerable insight, Leston Havens offers us a fine new glimpse into the art of psychotherapy… What every reader will get from reading A Safe Place is an unforgettable sense of a professional healer who is so empathetic that one can almost see his mind reach out to embrace another.

Richard Flaste

Havens’s views on psychotherapy and the work of mental health practitioners are interesting and provocative. Sitting beside Leston Havens and letting him share thoughts with you is time well spent.

Contemporary Psychology - Simon H. Budman

Havens's views on psychotherapy and the work of mental health practitioners are interesting and provocative. Sitting beside Leston Havens and letting him share thoughts with you is time well spent.
— Simon H. Budman

Contemporary Psychology

With considerable insight, Leston Haves offers us a fine new glimpse into the art of psychotherapy...What every reader will get from reading A Safe Place is an unforgettable sense of a professional healer who is so empathetic that one can almost see his mind reach out to embrace another.
— Richard Flaste

New York Times Book Review