Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy

Product Information

If you start this book you'll finish it quickly because once you're granted fly-on-the-wall access to an uber-realistic psychotherapy session it's not something you tend to walk away from in a hurry. Having thoroughly enjoyed Philippa Perry's HOW TO STAY SANE (from the Book of Life series), I was intrigued by the notion of a graphic novel approach to the basics of therapy.

I took the latter approach, which may have hurt my initial enjoyment as I found the story difficult to get into at first. A wonderful insight into the psychotherapist's couch from the perspective of both the client and the psychotherapist. I really liked it - I think it would be interesting to therapists and people who've been to therapy (and curious others).This graphic novel was a real page turner, I felt like a fly on the wall: really valued the insights gleaned from a year-long process between client and therapist. appreciated the process tracking, thinks she does it the best amongst all the other authors of psychotherapy tales i’ve read so far.

It's the visual equivalent of Perry's prose style, with the emphasis always on making everything clear to the reader. Possibly good to those with a passing interest in psychotherapy, but not a great comic and not a great read. The book is a graphic depiction of a psychotherapy case of a man "James" who is a successful barrister who begins to steal for no reason. The story seemed too simplistic and wasn't really engaging, probably partly due to the many footnotes; the illustrations were rather poor and unattractive ; the font for the footnotes was so small they were almost unreadable ; the explanations in the footnotes were mostly too short to really offer an understanding, unless you already are familiar with these often complex theoretical ideas. She lives in London and Sussex with her husband, the artist Grayson Perry, and enjoys gardening, cooking, parties, walking, tweeting, and watching telly.Having said that I did like that Philippa acknowledges that the counsellor could make mistakes and correct herself so that counsellors are not perfect but that its important to be real and genuine. I'm not certain its style (both in the format, the writing, perhaps even the art style) would be received well by many, and it's not something I'd particularly recommend unless you're *that* curious about the topic.

It was easy to sit and read this in one sitting mainly because it’s so accessible and also interesting.

Bestselling author Philippa Perry (The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read) turns her keen insights to the power of therapy. Every session is not presented in detail, but the intent is to demystify the process of analysis by showing it from start to finish. In here she touches on the concepts of bracketing, boundaries, trigger theory, transference and counter-transference, value judgements and value systems, giving us a deeply absorbing and compelling insight into her working environment and some of the sophisticated tools she employs during it. I don't have the figures right now, but if you check into it, I think you'll find I'm right about that. Her third book, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will be Glad That You Did) will be published by Penguin Life in April 2019.

The drawings and dialogue are enough on their own, but the whole project is really enhanced by text footnotes/commentary at the bottom of most pages which gives lay readers some insight about what they're seeing from a clinical perspective. As soon as he did so, and it took him a year, his Spanish girlfriend married him and he never stole anything again.A graphic novel that explores the months-long encounter between London psychotherapist Pat and her client/patient/co-lead James, a successful barrister with an unhealthy compulsive addiction, Couch Fiction does a superb job of illustrating what exactly happens in a modern psychotherapy session.