The Talking Cure: Normal People, Their Hidden Struggles and the Life-Changing Power of Psychotherapy

By Gillian Straker (Australia) and Jacqui Winship (Australia)

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Published by Pan Macmillan Australia, this title will be useful to therapists, supervisors and mentors as well as lay readers in providing a lively, accessible but not simplistic peak into the consulting room and into what a relational approach offers. The book breaks down the boundaries between “us” and “them” in the therapeutic couple, focusing on common relational dynamics that limit our degrees of relational freedom in everyday life.

Straker and Winship, Sydney-based psychotherapists each with more than 25 years of clinical experience, pay homage to the many ways in which the therapist can learn from the patient, reflecting the deep value they place on the patient’s experience. The authors present nine stories of personal transformation, grounded in an understanding that therapeutic relationship can be partly replicated in our everyday lives by the simple practice of paying attention and being truly present with those we love. The Talking Cure aims to deepen one’s sense of what it is to be open to connection and to recognize that to be human is to be just a little bit mad.

thetalkingcure.net.au

Professor Gill Straker is a highly experienced clinical professor in the School of Psychology at Sydney University and a visiting Research Professor at the University Witwatersrand Johannesburg. She has published widely in the area of psychotherapy and psychology. She is a passionate believer in the transformative power of authentic relating and is firmly of the belief that we all are engaged in intense psychological struggles that we hide from others and ourselves and yet reveal in how we relate including in the consulting room. Gill has an international therapy and supervision practice and lives in Sydney.

Jacqui Winship has had 25 years of experience as a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and supervisor. She believes in the power of the therapy relationship to enable individuals and couples to grow, heal and thrive. As a mother, she has plenty of sympathy for how hard it is to get it right as a parent and shares with Gill a keen belief that we are all grappling with our own brands of ‘everyday madness’ as we navigate what it is to be human. She is based in Sydney.

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