Geography's difficult engagement with the psychological therapies

The consideration of psychoanalytic issues presents geography and geographers with a number of difficulties; this paper examines those difficulties from within a humanistic perspective. The most common geographical engagements with the psychological therapies have been with their psychodynamic and, to a lesser extent, humanist methodological forms. A humanist perspective on this engagement suggests that it has led to two associated problems. At a disciplinary level it has resulted in an approach that has tended to privilege intellectual knowledge at the expense of emotion, and at a personal level it has not encouraged an approach that is sensitive to difference. This essay proposes that a commitment to an engaged, 'congruent' listening might help temper these difficulties.