Why doesn't therapy heal us properly? In this article, Phoenix and Aria discuss the problems with therapy and how it has been designed, specifically, to avoid our core-traumas.

This article is a transcript of a recorded conversation between Aria and Phoenix. If you would prefer to listen to the audio-recording on which this transcript is based, you can download a zip file containing the original audio file by clicking here. The transcript below is lightly edited for legibility, and to add new information.

PHOENIX: You were first drawn to therapy when your uncle committed suicide.

ARIA: At that point, I was at a crisis point. I was just stranded in Paris, and I remember every time I stood on a platform. I was drawn to jumping over the edge. I kept looking down into water under bridges; and things like that. That was my feeling at that time.

PHOENIX: And your experience with that therapist was?

ARIA: Coldness. Just no understanding, no empathy. Going there, and just saying how I felt. But, the therapist not giving comfort or showing compassion.

PHOENIX: Do you feel that therapy is useful? I'm maybe specifically referring to traditonal talk-therapy. Do you feel it's useful?

ARIA: I haven't found it to be that useful. Most of the time I can't even identify what's going on because it's so deep in the subconscious. Everything's so suppressed. Everything's inaccessible.

PHOENIX: I feel the same. I feel like there is some purpose to talk therapy. I don't discount it entirely. But, it feels like it would take many many, many, many years with a very good therapist to get anywhere near the source of the problem.

I sat with so many therapists. Looking back, I see they were all deeply wounded themselves. Did you feel that, often, you were sat with someone who was deeply-wounded themselves and who was hiding that from themselves by setting up this patient-therapist model and calling themselves the 'therapist'?

ARIA: Absolutely. I definitely felt that when I went to see a therapist in Berlin. By the end of it, I could see that she was the one who needed the therapy. I felt quite exploited. It just felt like I was doing all the work, experiencing all the feelings, which is always the hardest thing. It felt like the therapist was there using me to work through her own feelings.

PHOENIX: I've definitely sat with therapists who have out-sourced the feeling of their own feelings to me, as the alleged patient. It's interesting the word 'patient' because the word 'patient' means waiting without complaint.

That's what a lot of people in therapy do, they wait without complaint while nothing-much happens. To take these linguistic constructs to the next level. I also think it's very interesting that the word therapist breaks down to two words: 'The' and 'Rapist' It does make me wonder whether a lot of us are sitting with symbolic-replacements for the person who abused us as a child. I think Freud would probably have agreed because he was very big on looking at the latent meaning behind words and dreams.

As we talked about in the previous podcast. Freud discovered that all of his female patients had been sexually abused. He was then hounded to retract this discovery.

It interests me deeply, the language we use. In this 'therapy'-dynamic, we have the-rapists, or therapists, and you have the patient, the one who waits without complaint. It feels like the dynamic itself might be deeply flawed.

JM Masson, whose book 'The Assault On Truth', we talked about in the last podcast, he called psychotherapy the dark art. It's also interesting when you separate the compounds in the word 'psychotherapist' you get 'psycho'-'the'-'rapist'. This presents an interesting new perspective on what might be going on.

I agree that 'therapy' is a dark art. Very few practitioners offer the light version of that. And by light, I mean the good true, compassionate version of that.

You had an experience with one of your therapists, where you explained to her that you had been sexually abused throughout your childhood and what was her reaction to that?

ARIA: I was in a crisis, and I reached out to my mother because I didn't know what to do, and I felt completely lost. She came over to Berlin.

Together, we had a therapy session with this therapist. The therapist advised my mother to go back to my father.

PHOENIX: A professional-therapist in Berlin, with presumably some kind of certification, on learning that your father had sexually abused you throughout your childhood. She advised your mother to return to him?

ARIA: My mother hadn't left him at that point. She just left him to go to Berlin. I basically advised my mother never to go back to the UK, to my father, to stay here with me, and to help me.

It felt like my mother trusted the therapist more than me; and she went back to the UK.

PHOENIX: So a professional therapist on being told that a man had raped a child many many times throughout that child's childhood: did she recommend you go to the police?

ARIA: No.

PHOENIX: She recommended that your mother return to your father. Did she recommend that you speak-out about what happened?

ARIA: It felt like she had probably experienced similar abuse when she was a child.

PHOENIX: Had you talked about the sexual abuse previously in therapy sessions with her?

ARIA: Yes, I always felt like I never really felt understood. It was very hard because I was having really severe flashbacks and feelings, and just very extreme states, and the therapist would always just tell me things like, "you should make a lavender tea, and have a bath". This was never going to help me.

This is just pathetic advice. You know you say that to someone if they've been caught out in the rain or something, not someone who has been violently abused most nights in their childhood. It felt like, when my mother got there, my mother completely took over. The therapist was also very happy to take the side of my mother.

PHOENIX: Do you think it's dangerous that many therapists haven't faced their own abuse experiences as a child? Then they sit with their certificates, in rooms, presiding over another survivor of abuse. How is therapy supposed to be healing when most therapists don't want to address their own problems?

ARIA: Absolutely, that's a fundamental problem. I don't see how you can help anyone with something that you don't even understand in yourself. It's like a teacher teaching math who has never studied math.

PHOENIX: I agree. There's a massive problem in our society with therapists who don't want to address the problem. The challenge is that most of these therapists study in institutions that also don't want to face the problem.

It's very dangerous in a society to be a therapist that actually helps people because if you start actually helping someone, then you start uncovering the truth of that society, then you come into conflict with that society.

ARIA:That was definitely the case with the therapist that I saw in Berlin. She was very happy to have her 'lovely' therapist studio, you know, and which is understandable. I guess everyone wants to have a certain quality of life. But once you start unraveling the pain of childhood, your whole worldview falls apart. A lot of people don't take that road because it's hard. Instead, they become 'therapists'.

PHOENIX: I remember things got so bad with your therapist in Berlin you came to me, and you said that you felt like the therapist was uncaring. You were shocked that she advised your mother to return to a man who was sexually-abusing children. You felt like there needed to be some sort of intervention, and I went with you to your therapist, and we confronted her about her behavior.

ARIA: I felt very scared when I we arrived to confront her. I sensed a lot of anger in her.

PHOENIX: It felt as though she started malfunctioning. I didn't really say anything to begin with. I was just sat in the room with you guys. It felt like she sensed that the game was up before I even spoke.

I remember hardly saying anything, and she became absolutely obsessed with me being in the room. I also observed, and I don't if it was typical of your therapy sessions, when you began to speak she almost immediately started speaking over you.

ARIA: That's so true. That was was the theme of all the therapy sessions.

Ultimately, I was there to speak. It was a therapy session. It was very invasive to be talking over someone. Especially as a therapist.

PHOENIX: I felt that your therapist's advice to your mother was so dangerous that it warranted a total confrontation. I told your therapist very clearly: I think what's happening here is that the therapist was abused as a child, and she's now avoiding that by being a therapist, and by telling people to return to their abusers because she hasn't faced the childhood-trauma in her own life. Do you remember her reaction to that?

ARIA: I remember her reaction. I just remember she looked like a cartoon character. It was like her eyes were bulging. I didn't realize that that could actually happen to a person, until I saw it with her. She just lost it then, and she she told us to get out.

PHOENIX: She opened the door to her room, and essentially kind-of pushed us out the door, basically.

I think what was most interesting about that is her office is full of mindfulness posters that basically said be calm, breathe — these kind of cliche mantras — and yet, here she was shouting at us, essentially, to leave. I don't know if I had an impact on her, I hope it did.

Finally, someone had said to your therapist: Stop doing this. You're abusing people by telling people to return to the abuser. It terrifies me how many people she might have given that advice to, or how many people sit patiently in that room while she essentially ignores the problem. She is the one who requires therapy. If, of course, therapy actually worked.

Your therapist is the one who required self-reflection. I think this is a massive problem in the medical community in general. It's very easy to take on these roles of doctor-patient, therapist-patient in order to assume a position of authority and control. This gives therapist the impression that they understand 'what's going on', whereas so often the therapist is the one who really needs the help, who really needs the support, and I say that with a sense of love.

I took no joy in confronting your therapist, but I hope that it had an effect on her. I hope it means that she doesn't do to other people what she did to you. How did you feel after the confrontation when we were sort of thrown out onto the street?

ARIA: I felt very shocked because I felt like I hadn't seen that side to her before. I guess I'd felt it, but I had always been playing into her dynamic, that she'd created.

It was only after we questioned the whole setup, that her real-self exploded out. Afterwards she wrote an email to me that was very insulting. She wrote that she felt like I was unstable, and that I needed more help.

PHOENIX: Some interesting projections there. That is the entire problem with the power-dynamic isn't it? Luckily we live in slightly more enlightened times, but I could imagine like one hundred years ago, if you'd confronted a therapist like that, they'd claim, "This woman is hysterical, put her in an institute."

We've evolved slightly from there, but there are still echoes of it.

ARIA: Right.

PHOENIX: There was apparently nothing for the therapist to confront in themselves, but you were unstable because she'd kicked us out; thrown us out on the street. You weren't stable.

It's amazing. The incredible gymnastic-acts these therapists perform in order to retain their sense of power, and control, in the face of the obvious fraud of what they're doing.

It was also interesting that this alleged therapy session, where we confronted her, lasted about ten minutes, yet she sent you a bill in response.

I sent her back a bill for the same amount, for the therapy session she experienced with me as therapist. She was the one in therapy; with us. I believe what we participated in there was a direct-intervention against a very abusive person who was supposed to be helping people. I hope that had an effect on her. She hasn't paid the bill yet.

This question leads on from those experiences and it is: Do you feel like most therapists are wounded?

ARIA: They're scared. Another therapist that I spoke to, she seemed kind, but it felt like this topic of ritual abuse scared her.

She said that she needed to think about herself, and her own sense of safety, and if she wanted to explore the topic with me. I'm glad that she was clear about that, but I felt it was very disappointing. I mean it's her job as a therapist to help patients, even with extreme stories.

PHOENIX: Do you feel like a lot of therapists are scared of confronting your story; your experiences?

ARIA: Another therapist that I went to, she was, in theory, able to treat ritual abuse-because she'd worked at a clinic which dealt with dissociative disorders. She had a very nice office, in a very nice part of town, and everything seemed very nice, but I remember coming out feeling very hurt after only half an hour and she treated it like I was some kind of clinical-study. She literally used the words "this is like the abstract of a paper", and I was like. "No, it's not. It's my life."

It all felt very bizarre. She made another comment, she said: "I don't think that you're close to your true self". This was after half an hour of meeting me. I took this completely to heart and really personally.

It really made me feel so upset. After the abuse and the torture I experienced as a child, a consequence of that is that you don't feel close to your true self. This is because your true self is ripped out of you by those abuse experiences.

You're completely fragmented and split into parts. She was accusing me of something that I can't even help. Something that was done to me.

PHOENIX: It's very likely that she was again projecting. I think this is the big problem with therapists. I admire a lot of Freud's work. But I think he very brilliantly encapsulates this limitation-of-the-therpaist. Freud famously said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Of course, Freud smoked cigars frequently. Essentially, what he was saying is: This stuff, these projections, displacements, these theories, they apply to you. They don't apply to me. Of course, this is plainly ridiculous. We are all vulnerable to these errors-of-attribution.

Too often the therapeutic position that is that a therapist is infalliable in their diagnosis. Unforunately, those who are most wounded are typically drawn to therapy. It is often a career path for those in denial, seeking power.

Few therapists reflect on their own behavior, and the possibility that they themselves might be subject to the very forces, confusions, processes of denial, that they claim to observe in the patient.

That's why I feel like the dynamic itself is problematic because it assumes that a therapist is in a position whereby they can essentially reach in and pull you out. But, often the therapist isn't themselves 'out'.

ARIA: Absolutely.

PHOENIX: I was in this cafe the other day. This experience was strange for many reasons. There was a female being sat at the back of the cafe, and then this haggard-looking man came in, hunched over.

I immediately thought: There's something troubling this person. He sat down with this woman and I realized, after a few minutes, that they were having a therapy session.

It was strange that they were having this session in a cafe in the open. He was late for the therapist, and she said to him, "Why are you late?" The she started making notes.

He began to describe how he missed various forms of transport. I, myself, as someone who has an interest in depth psychology; I immediately thought this guy is late because it's an unconscious expression of anger.

I thought: This guy's late because he's angry. I was going to listen some more but I just thought: This is so heavy. I was making a lot of quick judgments, I thought this guy's angry at the therapist, so I kind of put my headphones in because I didn't want to get deeply involved in this thing, and then after a while towards the end of their conversation I took my headphones out.

He was telling the therapist this story about a piece of short-fiction that he was writing for a class. For me, this story was a metaphor, a very clear metaphor for abuse that he had experienced. He was trying to express the fact that had been abused.

The alleged-therapist sat opposite him, taking notes. She seemed very dispassionate. I noticed she didn't ask him any questions about the story or the reason why he wrote it.

She was missing out on a huge-chunk of his inner world. As she walked away, I could see that she had this look of distaste on her face; as if she hadn't enjoyed the meeting at all; as if she felt obligated to meet this individual.

Obviously, I'm reading a lot into the body-language here, but I think it was significant. I thought: This guy seems so troubled and yet he's talking to someone who doesn't want to listen.

I'm an unwaged "guerilla therapist" - maybe that's not the right word. A renegade-prophet, or something. I sometimes see myself in those who have been hurt. I wanted to do something, so I walked up to the guy, and I said to him: "I listened to some of the conversation you had with the therapist and it reminded me of the things I said to my therapist when I was struggling to be heard."

I said to him, "I said those things because I was abused as a kid. I said: "I don't know if that happened to you but if it did, then you should find someone who wants to talk about that, not someone who doesn't." He looked bewildered, but kind of affected by it. He didn't say anything, and I said have a good day and I walked away.

I didn't want to get any more deeply involved in that, but I wondered: How many people in this city, and other cities, are going to talk to people who are supposed to be listening to them who are just doing it out of an obligation because they get money for it?

Most therapists don't have any deep interest in the individual or their inner world. Really, unconsciously, most therapists not want to talk about their own problems. That's why they chose to be therapists.

There's also a recent-fascination with Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy (CBT). There's also a recent fascination with concepts like 'mindfulness' now. I don't want to discount these methods entirely, but it's much easier to get lost in treating symptoms in the present, instead of looking at the origin of the problem, and fixing it properly.

To use an analogy: A lot of the therapies that are popular today simply mop-up the blood from a bullet-wound, and keep mopping up the blood from the wound. They put 'patients' in a mundane holding-pattern; functional at a basic-level, but they never remove the 'bullet' causing the pain.

To really heal ourselves, we must go deep into the wound, and pull the bullet out. But this process is one that requires genuine love from the person you're participating in that process with. It's also a process that puts you in direct confrontation with the taboos of of our societies.

The work of Gabor Maté is fascinating. Maté is an addiction specialist who works in a clinic in Vancouver. He has a very strong understanding of this. He articulates really beautifully what the problems are here.

ARIA: Gabor Maté makes the dynamics so clear. Listening to him describe his methods made me cry. I felt it was so kind and so warm-hearted to emphasize this link between individuals who are struggling with addiction and the traumatic origins of their struggle.

PHOENIX: I also wanted to mention Alice Miller who has written an amazing series of books. She was once a therapist but she turned against psychotherapy as soon as she determined that there was a very strong link between childhood conditioning and psychological problems later in life.

Alice Miller abandoned the therapist-community. She disavowed therapy entirely because she felt like there was too much of a power-dynamic within the therapeutic relationship.

There was too much opportunity for wounded therapists to harm their patient. She felt, and I agree, that the entire doctor-patient dynamic is itself flawed and it should be evolved.

I wanted to ask you, Aria, if you had any positive therapy experiences? I was curious about any therapies that perhaps encompassed more than just talking. Perhaps massage, or bodywork, or things that you've done yourself?

ARIA: The best therapy for me has been the sauna. The sauna helps me a lot, in a very gentle way. I feel like it's a good place for meditating.

Very gentle yoga has also helped. Running has helped a lot. Just doing things that that get me in touch with my physical-body have always helped. Drawing and analyzing dreams has also helped a lot.

Analyzing dreams is very usedul because they can tell you so much about what's really going on in your mind; rather than what's happening consciously during the day.

PHOENIX: I agree. I'm broadly of the Jungian perspective and Freudian perspective, with many many caveats.

I know that there's a huge volume of material lurking in the subconscious of most humans, and this really is the material that needs to be processed. Dreams are a powerful way of accessing this material. This is precisely the reason why dreams are marginalized, or dismissed as meaningless, in our societies. Listening to our dreams is an antidote to tyranny.

ARIA: Art has also helped me. Through my art I come to significant realizations.

PHOENIX: Is the best therapy self-therapy? Perhaps the entire concept of going to a therapist for help is a symptom of abuse?

Abuse survivors are conditioned to believe that some external authority has the solution to their problems.

Tragically, in seeking an external-authority to provide a solution to the problems caused by external-authority, we simply end up in a nightmarish-loop.

The problem, the fundamental problem, for many abuse-survivors is that we were not allowed to expand our self-volition. We were not allowed to build the resources within us to heal ourselves.

Citizens in broken-societies have been bred to depend on external authority figures. The very act of looking for a therapist; finding one; and going to see them is a tragic-repetition of the original problem. Seeking a 'therapist' is motivated by a socially-programmed error-in-thought: We are taught that someone else; in a position of authority; with a certificate, is going to heal us.

ARIA: I've had so many disappointing experiences with therapists now. It feels like it's so easy to go back to therapists that resemble an abuser.

Typically, I have repeatedly been drawn to 'therapists' who ressemble my mother. When I was a child, my mother would comfort me sometimes, but she was also a very dangerous person to be around, It feels like this pattern has repeated in therapy sessions, which just leads to more instability.

PHOENIX: There's another big problem with therapy: We pay for it. There's a transaction there; a demand for 'payment' in exchange for love; for attention.

The original problem in childhood for me, and for many people, was that love was not given freely. The 'payments' that I made for occasionally receiving affection, and care, as a kid, was to keep quiet about the sexual abuse.

There was a transactional agreement throughout my childhood: The agreement was: We'll feed and clothe you if you keep silent about the sexual abuse.

There's a direct-parallel here with the therapeutic relationship: One where you go to a therapist, and the therapist says, in an obfuscated manner, "I will love and care for you occasionally, if you pay me."

ARIA: Therapy is a very strange concept. Self-therapy is the best way. Also: you should be able to talk about things that are affecting you in your life with the people around you. People that that love and care about you, for free.That's a more natural way.

PHOENIX: Those with power and authority have fractured our societies to the extent that we don't really have this sense of community anymore. The function that that community would have provided, by giving us a place to talk and express our feelings, and communicate, is now being out-sourced to strangers called therapists.

The 'community' has been destroyed, and its function has now been monetized by therapists.

Do you feel like therapy might be the monetization of social disconnection?

ARIA: Yes. I was thinking about this with art as well. It's a bit of a side-topic, but I don't understand the connections being made between art and money; or therapy; or love and money.

PHOENIX: I'd like to add, at this point, that not all of my experiences in therapy have been entirely negative. I did have some good therapeutic experiences. But they were so rare that they can be viewed as occurring despite the 'patient-therapist' dynamic, rather than because of it.

I had one very positive experience with a therapist in London who hadn't gone through the traditional therapeutic route. He had trained as a computer programmer. His approach to therapy was very different. So different that I doubt there is anyone else using his methods.

This 'therapist' explored my psyche on a very systemic level. Almost like computer-code. He interpreted my problem in terms of a self-construct based in language. He could see that, through my use of language, what it was that I've been programmed with.

I think he regarded me as a very sophisticated computer system. Although that might sound like a slightly cold perspective, there is a lot of functional-overlap between computers and the human-mind. After all, mankind designed computers in its own image.

This therapist was quite a warm-hearted individual who set strong boundaries, but seemed really to listen. He really listened to me. This was likely a combination of his non-traditional methods, and his newness in the profession.

He was the first therapist I'd ever met who really listened. I don't think that was a function of his training. It think it was simply who he innately was. He really listened. That made a big difference.

This therapy was transactional, I did pay him. He was actually one of the cheapest therapists that I ever had. He was also the best because he actually listened. This quality was absent in so many people around me, yet he had it. In this case it made sense to me to pay him for this supernatural-attentiveness; for his time.

It's also worth noting that I was in therapy with this rare-genius for only a few weeks before he got me to the point where I didn't need him any more. He helped me to leave him. This is obviously not to the financial-advantage of therapists; and rarely occurs. Sadly, this one therapist was a rare gem in the muddy battlefield of haggard, broken individuals claiming to be therapists.

I also had a therapist in California who was briefly helpful. She was very bodywork-based. So, instead of working with language, she used the methods outlined in a book called: 'Waking the Tiger' by Peter Levine.

This book describes the concept that animals in the wild, when they're faced with the traumatic experience, either respond with a fight, flight, faun or freeze response.

The theory runs that, as kids, we often employ the freeze response, and so the therapeutic-unraveling and resolution of those experiences involves going back into that freeze response, and release what would have been used, the energy that would have been used, for fight-or-flight.

If you're new to that theory that might sound like strange, wild new information, but I recommend that book by Peter Levine.

With this therapist in California, I was very lucky to find a therapist who was authentically compassionate, who genuinely listened, who really cared about me as an individual, and she was also really prepared to hear my story because like you said it felt like many therapists don't want to talk about the slightest aspects of trauma.

Most therapists are much more fascinated by what's happening in the present because it's much easier to deal with. It's easy for a therapist to talk to someone who has a stressful job, and claim that they can use mindfulness to address that. It's much harder to understand why that person chose a stressful job. When you ask the deeper-questions, the conversation leads back to childhood conditioning and, often, to horrific trauma.

Aria, I wondered if you had any advice for people who were looking for a therapist? Perhaps, the advice is don't do it, or do you think there is some purpose to the game?

ARIA: I don't have any advice for people looking for a therapist. I haven't found a therapist that will help me. I have no advice to give anyone else.

PHOENIX: The advice I would give is: It's an absolute minefield out there. It's absolutely a minefield.

The therapeutic-scene is full of priests, gurus and shamans who have certificates on the wall, but who are denying their own pain. Most of these vampires are looking for some way to make money or to outsource the expression of that pain to someone else.

I know that sounds like quite a devastating verdict on the therapeutic industry, but it's quite fair. My advice to anyone looking for a therapist is: Enter into your search in the full knowledge that you're walking into a town full of pirates. You've literally walked into a town full of pirates as far as 'therapists' are concerned.

Most of these 'pirates' are hiding knives down the back of their shirts. They'll get you drunk and steal your money. This is who we're dealing with really. However among those pirates there's a few renegades, and you might find that individual. You might find that rare pirate who is a visionary, and does have a genuine interest in healing you.

There's a danger in looking for a therapist without an awareness of just how wild and villainous most of them are: You will be exploited.

So many people who go into the pirate town called 'therapy' are already extremely vulnerable. They're very desperate. Often, people seek therapy at their lowest point; at the point in which they're least able to see who around them is likely to exploit them.

Be be very, very aware. Be aware of what you're getting into. Be aware that certification doesn't really mean anything. The size of the office, and the beauty of the decor, means very little. In my experience, the cheapest therapist was the best. Again, that's hardly a rule, but I do think it's a weird paradox.

The skill-set that an individual requires in order to judge whether someone is a good therapist emerges out of a deep connection with the inner-child. Ironically, at that point of self-actualization, you don't need a therapist anyway.

If you don't have a deep connection with yourself -- which is likely because you're seeking therapy -- then you are probably going to choose the wrong person to assist you.

ARIA: I feel like you've been the best therapist.

PHOENIX: Ah, thanks. Likewise. I also feel I've been the best therapist to myself, and maybe you feel the same about yourself?

I wanted to finish by asking you, Aria, if there are any books that you recommend? I discovered, in my own healing process, that the best therapists have been people who weren't even in the same room; people who reached me through their books.

One of my favorite 'therapists' is Gabor Maté. He's written some great books like 'The Body says No.'

Alice Miller was an excellent therapist, although she disavowed therapy. Her books are so healing, and so eye-opening.

I am curious: Were there any books that you felt stood out as titles that helped you heal?

ARIA: Yes, The Courage to Heal.

PHOENIX: I've read that book also. What was it that you you felt was useful about that book?

ARIA: That book was very helpful because I came to it just having a sense that I had been abused. There's a section at the beginning which lists all the symptoms, and I had almost every one. I felt like it was very clearly written. It was a good starting point.

PHOENIX: I really enjoyed The Courage to Heal, as well. I found it very powerful in my healing process. It's very comprehensive. It lists all the symptoms that those who've experienced sexual abuse may experience. The book also goes through the entire spectrum of feelings the survivor of abuse will go through. The book includes guidance on confronting the abuser -- or not confronting them -- and on aspects of the healing journey.

The Courage to Heal is a really great book. It's gone through several revisions. I would place it towards the top of my list of must-reads, along with Trauma And The Soul by Donald Kalsched.