The Creation of New Ideas in Psychotherapy: A guidebook

Alvin R. Mahrer spent the first 45 years after graduation, putting together a psychotherapy that made sense to him—he called it ‘experiential psychotherapy’. He is spending his next years nudging the field of psychotherapy toward a revolutionary paradigm shift. This nudging continues in The Creation of New Ideas in Psychotherapy: A guidebook. Here Alvin Mahrer shares his passion for moving psychotherapy forward and lays down the challenge to his readers to follow the guidelines, and having done so enter a world where new ideas in psychotherapy are possible. He invites anyone and everyone in the field to follow the practical and workable ideas in this book to revolutionise the field of psychotherapy.

Alvin Mahrer writes: The emphasis of this book is on the field of psychotherapy mainly because I am much more familiar with this field than I am with other fields that value the creation of new ideas, fields such as literature or art, education or public relations, engineering or medicine, music or theater. I finally found a way for me to do psychotherapy at a point where many psychotherapists close their offices and find ways of enjoying life after psychotherapy. Somehow, I am not sure how or why, that was just about the point where I turned to the neighboring field of philosophy of science, as a 'mature student,' with a passion to find what philosophy of science had to say about how to come up with creative new ideas. Why was I so enthusiastic about guidelines for coming up with creative new ideas? Having spent so many years trying to figure out a way to make sense of what people are like and how this thing called 'psychotherapy' can work, I found myself now facing some serious issues in the field of psychotherapy, issues that seemed deep, foundational, important, with powerful implications for the field.