Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy

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Being no stranger to the therapeutic process myself, reading this book was a little like having a magician show how she does a few of her simpler tricks.

As someone who goes for therapy, I found these deeply relatable at times, and I imagine that anyone who wants a raw, real picture of the sessions, and an understanding of what all goes through the mind of both the participants, would pick this up and find it useful.Because of this the comic never takes off as a story and heightens the sense that it is an introductory-type pamphlet on psychotherapy to those interested in it. She lives in London and Sussex with her husband, the artist Grayson Perry, and enjoys gardening, cooking, parties, walking, tweeting, and watching telly.

There are somewhat extensive footnotes for almost every page that point out nuances that may otherwise be missed. And even though the comic is drawn only in black and white, the art is well done and keeps the reader's attention. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. This is a story about connection, honesty and opening up emotionally - things many of us find difficult.It does a great job illustrating how we often say one thing and mean another and it really allows readers to get inside the mind of not only the patient, but the therapist as well. Perry has an accessible, clear writing style that lays everything out without dumbing it down, always reminding the reader that her story is introductory in nature, offering the basics so as to give a good idea of what the process of therapy entails. Her journey with one of her fictional clients was insightful and showed exactly how therapy sessions work.

Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. However, I can imagine that for therapy students, such a book could be a great introduction to the process of psychotherapy, and spark off interesting debates. 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.I took the latter approach, which may have hurt my initial enjoyment as I found the story difficult to get into at first. She was born and raised in the wilds of North London and still lives there with two lovely homosexual housemates and a terrible cat. I liked the illustrations, enjoyed the humour and there was a poignant message about allowing yourself to be honest with yourself, to dig deep and take accountability for your growth (the patient). As a result of reading this I would read other books by Philippa Perry and feel that I can’t help but like her.

I really looked forward to reading this, and it was an interesting read, but I thought it was shoddy. Having previously read Susie Orbach's 'The Impossibility of sex' years ago when I was working in psychiatry/psychotherapy I was really keen to read this after an interview I read about the author. I really liked it - I think it would be interesting to therapists and people who've been to therapy (and curious others). Based on a case study of Pat (our sandal-wearing, cat-loving psychotherapist) and her new client, James (an ambitious barrister with a potentially harmful habit he can’t stop), this graphic novel follows the anxieties, frustrations, mind-wanderings and break-throughs of each, through a year of therapy sessions together.It's the visual equivalent of Perry's prose style, with the emphasis always on making everything clear to the reader. I think its perhaps meant as a light-hearted teaching tool to those in the fields of counselling/psychotherapy. Maybe I would've expected it to be more inclusive of the kinds of questions raised during therapy, but the limitation was imposed by the anecdote, which is understandable, but makes it fall short on certain accounts.