“When I read you, it makes me angry that you know all this,” one woman angrily declares when she comes to see Nancy McWilliams. “I want to take what you have.” In my opinion, it is not necessary to be angry with Nancy McWilliams, but the desire to know everything that she knows really arises almost from the first pages of this book.
It would seem that the book is devoted to a highly specialized topic and is designed for specialists. However, you can immediately find that it is arranged like a suitcase with a double bottom. The author reflects on what resonates within everyone who feels an interest in their inner world — and about our need to understand ourselves, and about what are the chances to change and find new solutions to old problems … At the same time, the complex issues of the human psyche are outlined so that you do not feel that you are taught or loaded with terms and constructions that are inaccessible to your understanding. On the contrary, thanks to the slow and consistent story, in which Nancy McWilliams constantly refers to examples from her extensive clinical practice, you find yourself an accomplice and “empathy” with the adventures of the soul taking place in the psychotherapist’s office, intuitively capturing the meaning of professional terminology. But what is even more entertaining is that the author constantly reveals to us what is happening in her own soul in the course of working with patients. Nancy McWilliams does not pretend to be a wise expert who never makes mistakes and knows no doubts. She is not afraid to show herself as an ordinary, vulnerable person who faces unforeseen turns in her work, but she does not lose sight of her main task — to help the patient to abandon «self-hatred and magical hopes of change in favor of mourning and adaptation.»
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For some, this book may be a door to the world of psychotherapy, an opportunity to travel through it, accompanied by an attentive, subtle commentator and interpreter of the phenomena of mental life, such as Nancy McWilliams. And a professional psychologist will find in her book a practical guide on the basis of which he will be able to build his understanding of that particular unique person who came to see him and to whom he seeks to provide psychological assistance. This book can be especially useful for those who have only recently embarked on the path of a professional psychotherapist, since Nancy McWilliams, talking about her doubts and difficulties, arranges a kind of master class, inviting the reader to understand the causes of difficulties and mistakes with her. «.