This spring I have been writing - two new books.
"Guilt" and "Listening to the Other". The first is an exploration of themes around Guilt, through the medium of alternating sections of a fictional account of young people growing up in London in the sixties and facing various events and dilemmas, inter-posed with more theoretical discussion. (the cover design for Guilt is still in negotiation!)
The second is based on a course programme I designed in the autumn, and teaches basic listening skills. The methods are grounded in the approach we teach, itself based on Buddhist Psychology, but the book is intended for a general reader so avoids direct references to Buddhist theory. I am about to start writing a "level 2" which will be more overtly teaching counselling/therapy skills from an object related /other-centred approach.
Had some nice endorsements of the Guilt book:
ENDORSEMENTS AND REVIEWS:
Caroline Brazier has produced a ‘tour de force’. Her book is part novel, part autobiography, part commentary but, above all, it is a deeply spiritual exploration of perhaps the most elusive and yet most universal of all states of being. Guilt feelings, appropriate and inappropriate, afflict us all and in these pages we see how they can cripple lives and lead to self-deception and gross self-denigration. This gentle, sensitive and yet ruthlessly honest book combines the gifts of the talented story-teller, the insightful therapist and the wise spiritual traveller. It will make you laugh and weep and it will also compel you to re-visit much of your own experience with heightened awareness and awakened conscience. It is a spiritual thriller which defies categorisation and is compulsively readable. Brian Thorne, Emeritus Professor of Counselling, University of East Anglia; Lay Canon, Norwich Cathedral
Caroline Brazier has written an amazing dissection and re-weaving of guilt and all its pained relatives. It is perhaps the most complete "anthology" of the permutations of guilt that I have ever seen, subtle, complex, multi-faceted and nuanced, layer upon layer of yet another meaning of the effects of guilt, as experienced by children with no such rich language or comprehension to define all of this as this author does for them and us. Such language now provided through the eyes and heart and intellect of a very astute and brilliant adult author, psychologist, spiritual companion and human observer, makes it as rich a tapestry of guilt as a finely elaborated needlepoint on a wall at Versailles. I was truly amazed. I shall surely never see guilt in the same way again, and I will listen with even more compassion to those so suffering from its stings. Dr Gay Barfield, educator, author & person-centred marriage and family psychotherapist, and former founder and co-director with Carl Rogers of the Carl Rogers Institute for Peace
