Re-arranging the furniture in my head – A story of becoming

Abstract

My relationships with my therapists are fundamental to my narrative of becoming a psychotherapist. This paper outlines the path from my troubled childhood, drawing on many years of being a client in therapy, towards my shift to the therapist’s chair. Grounded in intersubjectivity theory and using the psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott (1965) and Bion (1962), I explore how my experience of being a client and becoming a person is shaping my practice as a psychotherapist. Additionally, I seek to deconstruct the notion of the ‘wounded healer’ and conceptualise the work of a psychotherapist using the idea of the ‘healing wounded’.