A Place for Beauty in the Therapeutic Encounter is written for all psychotherapists, counsellors, and psychologists who practise under the broad banner of psychoanalytic thinking. It is also for anyone who loves beauty and wants to think more about its place in the mind.



Dorothy Hamilton is a Professional Member of the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy (AGIP), formerly its chair; a member of the College of Psychoanalysts; and Honorary Fellow of the UK Council for Psychotherapy.



In a former career she taught emotionally and behaviourally disturbed children; she was co-founder of PACT (Parents, Children and Teachers), the home learning initiative, co-writing Methuen's Parent, Teacher, Child and Learning at Home. She took an MA in the Psychology of Religion at Heythrop College, gaining a distinction for her work on mapping the language of psychoanalysis to that of religious experience. She has taught, given papers and published on a wide range of psychotherapeutic subjects, often with a bias toward metapsychology, and in a variety of settings. Amongst these, she ran a series of conferences on 'Psychoanalysis and the Nature of Consciousness', of which many of the papers were published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy. Groups she has run include a clinical support group at the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Centre and a staff group at Holloway Prison.



FOREWORD



INTRODUCTION



CHAPTER ONE – Elusive Beauty



CHAPTER TWO – Beauty Recognised



CHAPTER THREE – The Rise of the Aesthetic Perspective: Before Bion



CHAPTER FOUR – The Rise of the Aesthetic Perspective: Bion and Beyond (1)



CHAPTER FIVE – The Rise of the Aesthetic Perspective: Bion and Beyond (2)



CHAPTER SIX – David: Aesthetic Conflict



CHAPTER SEVEN – Beauty and Knowing (1)



CHAPTER EIGHT – Beauty and Knowing (2)



CHAPTER NINE – Mary: The Beauty of the Method



EPILOGUE



REFERENCES