1st Edition

On Practising Therapy at 1.45 A.M. Adventures of a Clinician

By Brett Kahr Copyright 2019

    Although Professor Kahr spends most of his week facilitating traditional psychoanalytical sessions with his patients, in his spare time he has had many professional adventures outside the consulting room, broadcasting as Resident Psychotherapist for the B.B.C., lecturing about the intimacies of couple psychodynamics on the stage of the Royal Opera House, and defending “Lady Macbeth” in a murder trial at the Royal Courts of Justice in conjunction with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

    In this compellingly written and unputdownable book, Kahr shares his wealth of adventures both inside the consulting room and in the wider cultural sphere, disseminating psychoanalytical ideas more broadly. The book suggests that the “traditionalist” and the “maverick” aspects of the practising clinician can exist side by side in a fruitful collaboration. These adventures will encourage those embarking upon their first steps in the helping professions to entertain more creative ways of working.

    Prelude: Of Mavericks and Medias; Introduction: On Practising Therapy at 1.45 A.M.; Section One: Consulting Room Essays; Chapter 1: The Handshake; Chapter 2: Tissues; Chapter 3: The Ten-Minute Gap; Chapter 4: On Painting the Consulting Room; Chapter 5: The Bookshelf; Chapter 6: Baseball Caps, Overcoats, Orange Suits, and Neckties: On Patients and Their Clothing; Chapter 7: On Patients Who Remove Their Clothing in Sessions; Section Two: Media Essays; Chapter 8: How to Make a Forty-Seven-Minute Television Programme in Only Three Years; Chapter 9: Filming Sexual Fantasies; Chapter 10: How to Make 120,000 People Happy in Just Ten Weeks; Chapter 11: A Night at the Opera: Freudians at Covent Garden; Chapter 12: Defending "Lady Macbeth": Testimony of an Expert Witness; Section Three: Historical Essays; Chapter 13: Four Unknown Freud Anecdotes; Chapter 14: Why Freud Turned Down $25,000: Mental Health Professionals in the Witness Box; Section Four: The Mind of the Psychotherapist; Chapter 15: Musings of a Musicophiliac; Chapter 16: I Suffer from Karnacitis; Postlude: In Camera and On Camera, or, a Maverick’s Manifesto; Acknowledgements; Original Sources of the Chapters; References;  Index

    Biography

    Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health field for over forty years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, in London, and Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health. A Trustee of the Freud Museum London and of Freud Museum Publications, he has written or edited fourteen books, and he has served as series editor for more than fifty-five other titles. He is Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy and works full-time with individuals and couples in London.