Face to Face: Therapy As Ethics

In this book, Paul Gordon argues that psychotherapy is fundamentally an ethical endeavour in which the therapist is called upon to take up a stance of responsibility and openness to the other. Such openness requires the abandonment of a great many preconceptions and a critical examination of what is too often taken for granted, including language, listening, interpretation and the therapeutic space. The author speaks engagingly of an encounter with poetry, arguing that its methods and metaphors can lead on to a new view of therapy. He also urges that an ethical therapy has to move beyond the confines of the consulting room to a real engagement with the world.