1st Edition

Cognitive Analytic Therapy and the Politics of Mental Health

Edited By Julie Lloyd, Rachel Pollard Copyright 2019
    282 Pages 40 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    282 Pages 40 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Cognitive Analytic Therapy and the Politics of Mental Health provides an overview of the development of cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), and illuminates how the political context affects the way in which therapists consider their work and facilitates their practice.

    This book examines how CAT contributes to wider debates over ‘the politics of mental health’. With contributions from those working in services –  including adult mental health, learning disabilities and child and adolescent therapists – the writers consider how contemporary politics devolves responsibility for mental illness onto those suffering distress. The evolving political and social attitudes clients bring to therapy are also addressed in several chapters, and there is a focus on groups in society who have been marginalized and neglected in mental and physical health services.

    Cognitive Analytic Therapy and the Politics of Mental Health offers a fresh understanding of the contemporary politics of mental health that will be of interest to all therapists and mental health professionals.

    Table of Contents

    Acknowledgements

    List of Contributors

    Abbreviations

    Acknowledgements

    Richard Handley's story

    Forward

    1. Introduction: cognitive analytic therapy and the politics of mental health

    JULIE LLOYD AND RACHEL POLLARD

    2. Reciprocal roles in an unequal world

    HILARY BROWN

    3. Putting the social into psychotherapy: implications for CAT

    TERESA HAGAN, NICOLA ARMSTRONG AND JAN BOSTOCK.

    4. The de-radicalisation of CAT: a regressive interaction of economics, theory and practice?

    RACHEL POLLARD

    5. The madness of money: the super-rich, economic inequality and mental health

    LAWRENCE WELCH

    6. The intergenerational transmission of the adverse effects of inequality

    JOSEPHINE F. DISCEPOLO AHMADI

    7. Using CAT to bridge the gap: attending to the ultimate and the intimate

    EMILY HANDLEY, BETH GREENHILL AND KIERON BEARD

    8. From deviance and sin to unmet needs: a CAT conceptualisation of challenging behaviour

    JO VARELA

    9. Responding not reacting to challenging behaviour: a reformulation approach

    JO VARELA AND LIANNE FRANKS

    10. Transforming care in England for people who have intellectual disabilities and forensic formulations

    PHILIP CLAYTON

    11. Unequal ground: working with people affected by child sexual abuse

    JULIE LLOYD AND HILARY BROWN

    12. Immorality, illegality and pathology: the sex and gender knots

    WILLIAM WALLACE

    13. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away: recognising and reformulating gender in CAT

    BETHAN DAVIES

    14. Why hate matters: An introduction to René Girard’s theories of mimesis and the scapegoat mechanism and their relevance to CAT theory and practice

    MATTHEW TINKER

    15. Owning privilege and acknowledging racism

    HILARY BROWN

    16. How to relate: The Italian dilemma -- trust and cooperation make the world go around, but do we trust and can we cooperate?

    CRISTINA FIORINA AND MARISA POGGIOLI

    17. A social justice framework for training in cognitive analytic therapy: inequalities, power and politics in psychotherapy

    ANN BENSON

    APPENDIX 1: psycho-social checklist

    INDEX

    Biography

    Julie Lloyd is a clinical psychologist and cognitive analytic therapist and co-editor of Cognitive Analytic Therapy for People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Carers (2014).

    Rachel Pollard is a cognitive analytic psychotherapist and the author of Dialogue and Desire: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Linguistic Turn in Psychotherapy (2008).

    'This is a challenging book which should not be ignored. Its authors attempt to ensure that Cognitive Analytic Therapy stays true to its principles of inclusivity and equality and of seeing a person within their social as well as their emotional reality. They also combine to utter a clarion call to society in general, as it struggles with the consequences of neoliberal ideology. They reject complacency and blind acceptance of the status quo and face, head-on, important issues and prejudices which we, and by implication, all practitioners of psychotherapy, too readily avoid.'

    Annalee Curran, UKCP registered CAT therapist, supervisor and trainer. Founder Member and first Chairperson of ACAT and now a Life Member.