This vital new book examines how healing encounters might further the horizons of practice and extend innovation in professional interpersonal relationships. Highly qualified contributors explore ways in which insights into individual, cultural and community meanings open further perspectives on human being and help clarify what can feel a confusing present and an increasingly unpredictable future.

Divided into parts on Personal and Professional Identity, Culture and Personal Context, Practice Research, and Clinical Practice, each chapter opens up thinking on crucial contemporary issues, informed by personal and clinical practice case-study examples and by findings from leading-edge research investigations, adding to the current literature on both theory and practice.

This book brings together voices from the margins, offering alternative practice perspectives that look beyond protocol and statistics-based therapy, emphasising the relational richness that informs professional interpersonal encounters in the support of mental health and wellbeing. It will be of immense value to counsellors and psychotherapists in training and practice, as well as for related mental health professionals and those with an interest in the caring professions.