Updating My Lecture

As regular readers will know, I have been asked again to give my lecture on 'A Patient's Perspective of Psychotherapy' at one of the London universities. I was originally due to give this lecture last week, but owing to having to go into hospital again I asked 'S' if it could be postponed. As it turned out, I was home again before the lecture was to be given but it would have been difficult for me to get it updated and I'm not sure that I was well enough to cope with the experience anyway.

This morning I have contacted 'S' and said that I would be happy to do it on 25th March if that date is still suitable and available ('S' had given me three dates and that one suited me best). He's going to get back to me later to confirm, but no matter when I give it, the lecture does need some work done on it. So I have spent the last hour trawling through my blog looking at the posts that deal with psychotherapy.

I should explain here that the lecture is based on a series of emails that I wrote to Mr Smiley and posts from this blog. I have written a great deal about what has been discussed at my therapy sessions and how I have felt before, during, and after them here, and as such it provides an invaluable source of material for the lecture.

Since I gave the lecture last year, my first period of psychotherapy has come to an end, I have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital (twice) and I have started a new phase of psychotherapy. In addition, I have been referred back to the psychotherapy service where I had my year-long period of psychotherapy for further assessment with a view to me receiving group psychotherapy.

Fortunately my lecture was on my computer so it has simply meant me copying and pasting material from the blog into the lecture and now all I have to do is to edit the additional material, taking out the extra stuff that is not actually about the therapy, and massaging it into a flowing speech.

The course that I give this lecture on is a Master's course on Mental Health, and a significant part of the course covers various aspects of the talking therapies, so the students receive lots of lectures about the different types of therapies that there are, but all from a theoretical point of view. My lecture is the only one given by someone who gives a patient's perspective of what it is like to live with a mental health problem and the value, or otherwise, of talking therapies. I have also been asked by 'S' to include something in the lecture about what I think are the qualities that make a good therapist. Having had four different therapists over the years (one of them informally) I have had the very good, the inexperienced but good, and one who was absolutely appalling so I think that I can give a pretty good answer to that one.

This afternoon I have returned to working on the doll, but tomorrow morning I will get up and go to work editing the lecture and adding the part that 'S' has asked for. It will seem strange revisiting the words that I have written on this subject but I know that the lecture was very well received last year and received an excellent evaluation from the students, so although I know that I will be anxious about doing it all over again, it is important that the patient's perspective is given and I am grateful for the opportunity to do this.