Jeremy Holmes – författare

This is a concise, accessible introduction to the basic principles of attachment theory, and their application to therapeutic practice. Bringing together 70 years’ of theory and research, its expert authors provide a much-needed user-friendly guide to attachment-informed psychotherapy.

The book covers:

What is psychoanalysis? Is it relevant to today’s mental health crisis? How can psychoanalysis help people suffering from psychological distress and illness? This vital new book examines how psychoanalysis has changed since its inception, and how it has adapted to the needs and concerns of 21st-century mental health professionals and patients.

The first part of this book provides a concise and unbiased account of the origins of psychoanalysis, and the theories which characterise the main post-Freudian schools – neo-Freudian, Kleinian, interpersonal, self-psychological, Lacanian – and the ways in which they agree and diverge. The second part uses clinical illustrations to examine the practicalities of psychoanalytic technique in the consulting room – assessment, free association, dream analysis, transference, and counter-transference. Whatever their allegiance or role, mental health professionals – psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child mental health professionals, mental health nurses – need to be conversant with the strengths, relevance, and limitations of the psychoanalytic approach.

This book provides an indispensable, up-to-date, and accessible account of psychoanalysis today. Shaped throughout by considering the viewpoint of an interested 21st-century reader, it is of great interest to psychoanalysts and related mental health professionals, as well as students and all those interested in the treatment of mental health.

What is psychoanalysis? Is it relevant to today’s mental health crisis? How can psychoanalysis help people suffering from psychological distress and illness? This vital new book examines how psychoanalysis has changed since its inception, and how it has adapted to the needs and concerns of 21st-century mental health professionals and patients.

The first part of this book provides a concise and unbiased account of the origins of psychoanalysis, and the theories which characterise the main post-Freudian schools – neo-Freudian, Kleinian, interpersonal, self-psychological, Lacanian – and the ways in which they agree and diverge. The second part uses clinical illustrations to examine the practicalities of psychoanalytic technique in the consulting room – assessment, free association, dream analysis, transference, and counter-transference. Whatever their allegiance or role, mental health professionals – psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child mental health professionals, mental health nurses – need to be conversant with the strengths, relevance, and limitations of the psychoanalytic approach.

This book provides an indispensable, up-to-date, and accessible account of psychoanalysis today. Shaped throughout by considering the viewpoint of an interested 21st-century reader, it is of great interest to psychoanalysts and related mental health professionals, as well as students and all those interested in the treatment of mental health.

Storr’s The Art of Psychotherapy first appeared in 1979 and became an instant classic. After Storr’s death, a third edition was rewritten and revised by Jeremy Holmes, and this fourth edition is a further up-to-date iteration.

Storr (1920–2001) and Holmes, both medical psychoanalytic psychotherapists, are ‘elders’ in the world of psychotherapy. Their eclectic, experienced and cultured voices offer students and psychotherapy practitioners clinical wisdom hard to find elsewhere. Their book expounds in a very practical way the issues entailed in setting up and maintaining a psychotherapeutic relationship and practice: how to introduce oneself, arrange one’s consulting room, establish a contract, when and how to make ‘interpretations''. The second half of the book deals with more general and often problematic issues, including how to align therapy in the light of diagnosis, working with ‘difficult’ patients, therapy termination, and the life course of a therapist, ending with a valedictory overview. In this fourth edition, Holmes has added a chapter on the scientific validation of psychotherapy, sections on tele- and e-therapy, non-binary gender and sexual identities and the impact of race and class on the therapeutic relationship.

This engaging, accessible and profound book is essential reading for psychotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists and mental health practitioners in training or practice.

Storr’s The Art of Psychotherapy first appeared in 1979 and became an instant classic. After Storr’s death, a third edition was rewritten and revised by Jeremy Holmes, and this fourth edition is a further up-to-date iteration.

Storr (1920–2001) and Holmes, both medical psychoanalytic psychotherapists, are ‘elders’ in the world of psychotherapy. Their eclectic, experienced and cultured voices offer students and psychotherapy practitioners clinical wisdom hard to find elsewhere. Their book expounds in a very practical way the issues entailed in setting up and maintaining a psychotherapeutic relationship and practice: how to introduce oneself, arrange one’s consulting room, establish a contract, when and how to make ‘interpretations''. The second half of the book deals with more general and often problematic issues, including how to align therapy in the light of diagnosis, working with ‘difficult’ patients, therapy termination, and the life course of a therapist, ending with a valedictory overview. In this fourth edition, Holmes has added a chapter on the scientific validation of psychotherapy, sections on tele- and e-therapy, non-binary gender and sexual identities and the impact of race and class on the therapeutic relationship.

This engaging, accessible and profound book is essential reading for psychotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists and mental health practitioners in training or practice.

Use of the imagination is a key aspect of successful psychotherapeutic treatments. Psychotherapy helps clients get in touch with, awaken, and learn to trust their creative inner life, while therapists use their imaginations to mentalise the suffering other and to trace the unconscious stirrings evoked by the intimacy of the consulting room.

Working from this premise, in The Therapeutic Imagination Jeremy Holmes argues unashamedly that literate therapists make better therapists. Drawing on psychoanalytic and literary traditions both classical and contemporary, Part I shows how poetry and novels help foster therapists’ understanding of their own imagination-in-action, anatomised into five phases: attachment, reverie, logos, action and reflection. Part II uses the contrast between secure and insecure narrative styles in attachment theory and relates these to literary storytelling and the transformational aspects of therapy. Part III uses literary accounts to illuminate the psychiatric conditions of narcissism, anxiety, splitting and bereavement. Based on Forster’s motto, ‘Only Connect’, Part IV argues, with the help of poetic examples, that a psychiatry shorn of psychodynamic creativity is impoverished and fails to serve its patients.

Clearly and elegantly written, and drawing on the author’s deep knowledge of psychoanalysis and attachment theory and a lifetime of clinical experience, Holmes convincingly links the literary and psychoanalytic canon. The Therapeutic Imagination is a compelling and insightful work that will strike chords for therapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and psychologists.

Use of the imagination is a key aspect of successful psychotherapeutic treatments. Psychotherapy helps clients get in touch with, awaken, and learn to trust their creative inner life, while therapists use their imaginations to mentalise the suffering other and to trace the unconscious stirrings evoked by the intimacy of the consulting room.

Working from this premise, in The Therapeutic Imagination Jeremy Holmes argues unashamedly that literate therapists make better therapists. Drawing on psychoanalytic and literary traditions both classical and contemporary, Part I shows how poetry and novels help foster therapists’ understanding of their own imagination-in-action, anatomised into five phases: attachment, reverie, logos, action and reflection. Part II uses the contrast between secure and insecure narrative styles in attachment theory and relates these to literary storytelling and the transformational aspects of therapy. Part III uses literary accounts to illuminate the psychiatric conditions of narcissism, anxiety, splitting and bereavement. Based on Forster’s motto, ‘Only Connect’, Part IV argues, with the help of poetic examples, that a psychiatry shorn of psychodynamic creativity is impoverished and fails to serve its patients.

Clearly and elegantly written, and drawing on the author’s deep knowledge of psychoanalysis and attachment theory and a lifetime of clinical experience, Holmes convincingly links the literary and psychoanalytic canon. The Therapeutic Imagination is a compelling and insightful work that will strike chords for therapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and psychologists.

Second edition, completely revised and updated

John Bowlby is one of the outstanding psychological theorists of the twentieth century. This new edition of John Bowlby and Attachment Theory is both a biographical account of Bowlby and his ideas and an up-to-date introduction to contemporary attachment theory and research, now a dominant force in psychology, counselling, psychotherapy and child development.

Jeremy Holmes traces the evolution of Bowlby’s work from a focus on delinquency, material deprivation and his dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis''s imperviousness to empirical science to the emergence of attachment theory as a psychological model in its own right. This new edition traces the explosion of interest, research and new theories generated by Bowlby’s followers, including Mary Main’s discovery of Disorganised Attachment and development of the Adult Attachment Interview, Mikulincer and Shaver’s explorations of attachment in adults and the key contributions of Fonagy, Bateman and Target. The book also examines advances in the biology and neuroscience of attachment.

Thoroughly accessible yet academically rigorous, and written by a leading figure in the field, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory is still the perfect introduction to attachment for students of psychology, psychiatry, counselling, social work and nursing.