Clare Myatt, “Love & Imperfection: a Therapist's Story” Published by Coaching international with Lumphanen Press, 2019.
Clare Myatt is a Focusing practitioner, Somatic Coach and Psychotherapist now living and working in England. This book is her memoir, charting her own journey and that of one of her client’s toward personal growth and healing. Most practitioners would agree that the client - therapist relationship is one of the key factors, if not the most important one, in successful therapy. There are many words used to describe this vital relationship but probably the word least likely to be used in this context is ‘love’. Yet, from the get-go, this is precisely the word Clare uses to describe the relationship between herself and the client (whose name is Bill), love in the sense of agape. Agape is the Greek for “selfless love of one person for another without sexual implications”.
From this bold beginning, Clare’s and Bill’s individual stories and joint story unfolds. In the early chapters, she describes of her addiction to alcohol in brutally and unsettlingly honest terms, as are her descriptions of her experiences of relationships with men. Equally, the steps she took towards her own recovery are moving and inspirational. The following chapters are concerned with the therapeutic relationship she co-created with Bill. Bill was an ex-U.S. Army soldier, traumatised by his experiences in Vietnam. Beforehand his young life was adversely affected by a remote neglectful upbringing, one of the consequences of which was a deeply-felt shame. He self-soothed (process skipped) his experiences and feelings, conscious and unconscious, with alcohol. The touching story of his slow recovery is revealed in an intimate, fly-on-the-wall account of the therapy process he undertakes with Clare. Having established rapport and trust with Bill, an essential tool she conveys to him is grounding and centring. Thereafter, with mixed success, she employs a variety of relevant approaches but principally the Strozzi Bodywork approach. This involves addressing deeply held muscular contractions maintained in the body using touch, breath, and directed attention. Her thoughts and feelings about Bill and the ebb and flow of his therapeutic journey offer a rare insight into how a therapist navigates the possible interventions at her disposal within the ongoing, fluid, uncertain context of the client’s needs, values, beliefs and behaviour.
Although, not often acknowledged, perhaps all therapists are wounded healers and it is not uncommon for the healing relationship of therapy to work both ways as it did in Bill and Clare’s case. This makes complete sense from a Focusing perspective as we are all each other’s environments and we are in interactions, interaffecting each other all the time.
There is one other leitmotif in the book, a dimension of the therapeutic experience where many therapists fear to tread; spirituality. As therapist do, Clare describes establishing a ‘safe, holding container’ in her consulting room. Several times throughout the book she references a ‘spirit’ or ‘higher power’ present in the space between herself and her clients implying a greater (transcendent) container. She writes about “words coming out of my mouth that aren’t mine, as if I’m channelling some wisdom that I don’t own”.
This is certainly a thought- and feeling-provoking book, showing the care and consideration that Clare as a therapist gives to her clients. Clare’s writing is easy to read and many passages offer lyrical descriptions of her experiences. This is not particularly a ‘Focusing book’, however in one of the later chapters, Clare extolls the virtues of Focusing and draws on Gendlin to arrive at an understanding of “Who I am and therefore what I embody” is what matter in her approach to psychotherapy. Further for Clare, what makes the difference in her approach to therapy is “Getting out of the way of our natural tendency to heal – providing a nurturing, safe space, sometimes a guiding hand – that’s what best facilitates evolution”.
This book will probably be of great interest to therapists from all approaches and also to current and potential clients, however it is at its core, a human story of courage to change an unsatisfactory situation, of how love (agape) can be embodied and of determination to create a meaning life.
“Love & Imperfection: a Therapist's Story” by Clare Myatt is available through online booksellers or by ordering it from your local bookshop for £12.99.
by Tom Larkin
