A Guilty Victim
Recovering Creativity after Trauma and Abuse
A book by psychotherapist Toby Ingham
illustrated by his client ‘William Smith’
published by Karnac 13 March 2025
Toby Ingham
conducts by Zoom
Inner Circle Seminar No. 299
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 27 April 2025
10 a.m to 5 p.m.
| Toby Ingham |
| Toby Ingham’s consulting room, in his ‘shed’ |
This extraordinary book grew from a form of ‘Bayeux tapestry’ created by a client, ‘William Smith’, to illustrate and demystify the experiences of childhood and adolescence he was recounting in his psychotherapy with Toby Ingham.
Smith’s own healing artistic quest inspired him to invite Ingham to write an account of the therapy in the hope that it would help others. Ingham has fulfilled this request magnificently: painstakingly, with great perceptiveness, humility, and self-deprecating irony and humour.
The book combines Ingham’s account and Smith’s illustrations. It shows how the despair and desolation deriving from existential ‘trauma’ in childhood and sexual abuse in adolescence may be transformed, through authentic psychotherapy, into creativity and hope.
After decades researching the paradigmatic case of psychotherapy from Freud onward, Anthony Stadlen reached the conclusion that such histories should be written by clients, not by therapists. But this book, written by the therapist, illustrated by the client, exemplifies an even better solution. Like the therapy itself, it is a collaboration, client-led. Together, Ingham and Smith have created a masterpiece, deserving an honoured place in the history of psychotherapeutic case studies.
Today, Toby Ingham will describe and discuss with seminar participants the adventure of his shared quest with William Smith both in conducting this therapy and in writing and illustrating this book.
In the afternoon, Anthony Stadlen will lead discussion on general issues arising from this remarkable book and the conjoint creativity it describes and embodies.
‘Moving and absolutely gripping. Toby Ingham is an Oliver Sacks, an expert in the workings of the human mind with the writerly skill to turn painstaking clinical practice into compulsively readable narrative. This book is the story of the rescue, against all the odds, of a desperately damaged person; of a triumph of good over evil: it will be a resource and a balm for all who suffered neglect, abuse and other traumas as children in Britain’s residential care systems.’
Alex Renton, journalist and author of Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class
‘Toby Ingham has written an extraordinary book, part case study and part novel. The author is a psychotherapist and has written, with his patient’s active help and participation, an account of the therapy, charting the ups and downs, the dramas, misunderstandings and bursts of connection and understanding in the therapeutic relationship. Interspersed with the history of the therapy the author becomes a novelist and re-creates scenes from his patient’s life, telling stories of suffering and abuse but also of his patient finding some peace and understanding. The book shows how creativity is linked to courage, showing how if pain and trauma can be faced then our lives can be transformed.’
Laurence Spurling, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Senior Member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation
Toby Ingham is a UK-based psychotherapist and supervisor, a member of the Guild of Psychotherapists. He was a member of the Association of Independent Psychotherapists before its dissolution, and was Clinical Director of South Bucks Counselling (2019-2023). He has also published two short books, How To Improve Emotional Stability and Retroactive Jealousy: Making Sense of It. His writing has been commended in the British Journal of Psychotherapy.
This will be an online seminar, using Zoom.
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