Kilty, H. L. & Dewar, B. (2008). Book Review: Relationality: From attachment to intersubjectivity by S. Mitchell (2000). PrOSspect, 15(1), 8.

Mitchell’s book provides an important read for advanced students and practitioners of psychotherapy. He maps the theoretical history of psychoanalytic work from its origins in individualistic, intrapsychic processes to its contemporary focus on relationality, mutuality, attachment and intersubjectivity. He explores the issues and concerns that emerge from these approaches.

LeBrun L. (2007). Fully alive: Awakening Health, Humor, Compassion and Truth. Ottawa: Wel-Systems Institute.

Louise Lebrun continues to write in a growth inspiring way in this extension of her life's work as an author, speaker, coach and creator of WEL-Systems. She draws from scientific and intuitive wisdom to illuminate the power of the individual to reach their full life potential to build solutions at home, at work and in the world.

Sekhmet Rising: The Restlessness of Women's Genius (2006) Created and edited by Louise LeBrun, "with 17 Amazing Women" as contributing co-writers including Karina Evangelista, Dorothy Spence, Eva Marsh, Harjit Shokar, Susan Griffin, Koreen Kimakowich, Anita Allen, Theresa McKeown, Carole Maclnnis, Dominique Dennery, Gwen McCauley, Jackie Zirpdji, Patricia Donihee, Celine Levasseur Burlock, Susan Bremner, and Lorna LeBrun.

Published by The WEL-Systems Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Reviewed by Heather Lee Kilty and Barbara Dewar

Louise LeBrun, author and founder of The WEL-Systems Institute invited seventeen women participants and facilitators of the WEL-Systems growth experience to contribute narratives about their personal journeys and transformations to become more authentically themselves. "Each has had to come face-to-face with herself; not just who she wanted to be but who she has already become" (p.2). The introduction aptly warns the reader: "Be well warned: these women are highly contagious!"(p. 4). Each courageous and challenging story invites the reader to awaken to their own potential testimonies and to actively choose their own meaningful life opportunities.

Dewar, B., & Kilty, H. (spring, 2006).
Book Review: Making Sense Together. OSP Newsletter PrOSPect. Vol. 13, No. 2.

Making Sense Together: The Intersubjective Approach to Psychotherapy.
Peter Buirski and Pamela Haglund, 2001
Jason Aronson Inc. $53.50

Reviewed by Barbara Dewar and Heather Lee Kilty

Authors Buirski and Haglund have created a superb introductory text related to intersubjective theory and practice. This valuable contribution to the psychotherapy literature provides an overview of the basic fundamental concepts, ideas and therapeutic applications of intersubjective relational therapy. Experienced and novice practitioners are provided with rich, clinical illustrations that make the intersubjective come alive.

Challenging the Socialization of the Word "Cancer" and Making Decisions Based on My Intuitive Consciousness

Cancer defined as cells that divide too rapidly didn't tell me anything about my medical diagnosis of breast cancer. A very close friend suggested that I think of my diagnosis as having cancering cells in an area of my body, instead of my breast being a cancer. I could work with a verb, an action attached to cancer instead of a noun, which defined cancer as something diagnosed by someone who is an expert on something. I thought to myself that any given action is unique to the individual and that person's motivations perform the action. I wanted to make good decisions based on intuitive guidance from my inner world, tapping into a world where good messages were previously unconscious to me.

A psychodynamic process-focused group therapy differs from a psychoeducational group. In a psychoeducational group experience, the leader's mandate is to give the members necessary information for a focused issue, symptom or psychopathology; the main discourse centres on the focused issue. These groups are usually short term and hold the goal of ameliorating the symptom. Psychodynamic process-focused groups use methods that support dialogue about the members' interpersonal worlds. By articulating their interpersonal worlds, members are enriched by stronger self-identities that lead to expanding choices as to life options. The process model aims for self-transformation as constructed in relation to others. In process groups, the leader assumes the role of facilitator rather than educator. These groups often have an open-ended time commitment.

This edition of Espritpublications is unique. We have offered six of our Esprit Training of Psychotherapy Associates (ETPC) students an opportunity to share their self-reflective essays with our readership.

Can psychic and/or spirit experiences create meanings that foster the spiritual development of world religions? Throughout this exploration, I am assuming that all world religions are parts of an ever expanding whole. Steven Hawking (1990) hypothesized that the universe is always expanding, and for me, this opens the question of an ultimate knowing, possibilities or impossibilities.

Svoboda (1967), in his essay entitled "Parapsychology", provides the reader with a developmental history of paranormal phenomena and their levels of acceptance by institutions, especially world religions. The author explains that "for many centuries paranormal phenomena were considered the work of some dismembered ghost or supernatural force working through a 'crossed' human agent" (Svoboda, 1967, p. 995).In most early religions, especially the Christian religion, the paranormal was debated and often considered the work of Satan, and the church disavowed their experience.

Technique one: Dream work and free association

Freud was clear in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) that dreams are a direct connection to unconscious inner life. Modern psychoanalysis, specifically the intersubjective, has completely rejected Freudian psychoanalysis in favor of a relational model where discovery is what happens in the intersubjective field between the subjective world of the psychotherapist and the subjective world of the client. For me, Freud's theories on dream analysis are not contradictory but complimentary to the intersubjective domain. I have found his discovered knowledge of the method for analyzing dreams and the use of free association by the client in order to discover the hidden meaning in the dream work extremely useful as a technique for psychotherapy work.

Dewar, B. Campbell, S. (2004). From Intersubjective Psychotherapy to Esprit Networking: Mapping a Social Practice. In E. O’Sullivan and M. Taylor (Eds.). Learning Toward An Ecological Consciousness: Selected Transformative Practices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

The Esprit Networking Community Practice is engaged at this time in exploring personal stories, reflecting on their meanings, and supporting unknowns for understanding new directions. This process is fostering a sense of moral spirit that is strong enough to bring about personal and collective ethical actions that support renewed growth of community both locally and globally.

Annie's short life haunts me and I feel driven to write about the agonizing drama of her death. She died a long time ago, in an uncultivated farm field, supported by an old snake fence that was lined with patches of wild rose bushes.

Summers at my grandmother, Nanny Dewar's Prince Edward Island farm were time-outs, a kind of breathing space from the commotion and disturbances of our family life. I am remembering 1960, as it was the only time I had seen great-uncle Georgie. He lived his life as a hermit, "money under the mattress and so on", in the rundown farmhouse that was a field away from the home of his brother Frank, who was Nanny's husband and my grandfather.

Achievement of a Free Space (third space) or Bridge to Understanding

My enculturation by Anglo-Saxon birth into white privilege in Canada has silenced the healthy rage of others around race and class issues. Learning about this together in our Esprit group and with another brave person blew the lid off of my blindness. I feel that I can begin to write about this because I am open at fifty-one to facing the people I have oppressed and continue to oppress by my internalized white privilege. This discovery is not my honour, it belongs to the many others through history who have experienced devastating oppression by Euro/American white privilege and have chosen to challenge this domination and to those few who choose with patience, to try to get through to me personally.

Basis for Recommending to the Minister of Health that Psychotherapy be Regulated and/or a Controlled Act.

I have observed that the general public in Canada is aware of one prevailing approach for the treatment of mental health issues, one that is associated with the medical and psychiatric model. Alternative and complementary health care have always existed, side by side with 'conventional' medicine though mostly in silence, muffled for socio-political reasons, tending their own crops and establishing homesteads.

A recommendation was made to the Ontario Minister of Health in March 2001 that psychotherapy be regulated and that provision of any kind of emotional counseling be governed by the Regulated Health Professions Act because of the potential risk of harm that may/can happen by untrained health care workers. If this recommendation becomes law it will prevent a large number of health care providers like, palliative caregivers, grief counselors, priests, psychotherapists who are not psychologists or psychiatrists and possibly even social workers from doing mental health work. Many people living in Ontario could loose access to health care because the alternative or complementary services they know and rely on, that support the growth of our human potential would be required by law to join the existing regulated medical psychiatric model. In essence alternative and complementary health care would be eliminated. In all good conscience, a mammoth decision like this cannot be made on the words of a few who are stakeholders in the medical psychiatric model, and who do not substantiate their claims with solid, verifiable evidence.

I understand that learning about mentorship is a lifelong process. I believe that mentorship is a kind of personal responsibility that we take to help and support others, and to let others help us. The roles of mentor and 'mentee' are interchangeable in that, at one moment the learner is the teacher and at another moment, the teacher is the learner. In other words, our roles within interdependency are constantly changing and evolving.

I believe that any form of communication is part of our mentorship to others. Ultimately, I believe that our guidance must be in support of the human spirit, including all of life processes, and that nothing should be revered above or below the natural flow of life. Unfortunately, I can see that many of the mentorship teachings that have been put in place in the modern world have overlooked the human spirit. What I do observe is a small ground swell of leadership models that are based on mentorship: these models focus on the value of life and, for now, are on the margins of our culture, waiting to swoop in and make a larger claim.